Reading Elevates Empathy, Understanding

Reading is considered one of the many healthy habits people can adopt and is promoted by researchers, parents, and teachers. However, there has been a significant decline in the practice since the development of technology, which is now taking over society at an exponential rate. Reading holds a lot of benefits that range from the development of empathy to the fortification of cognitive abilities and the acquisition of knowledge. Specifically, reading fiction has been linked to the development of empathetic capacity in human beings.

A study done in 2014 by Bruce and Stanfield associated reading fictional stories with the development of helping tendency and also cognitive empathy. Fiction helps readers to imagine and feel how other people react to different circumstances than themselves. It also helps them to compare how their reactions would be in the same situation that the characters in the book are in. More than simply helping readers to understand different perspectives, fiction also helps to enhance the empathetic capacity of human beings, which is a trait that translates into real life and helps them to utilise their empathy to navigate different circumstances in their day-to-day life. 

Enhance understanding 

When individuals read material that portrays people from different classes, races, countries, and identities, it becomes easier for them to identify with those people in real life as they develop an understanding of them while reading. When one dives into a story, their brain reacts almost as if they are present in the situation that they are reading about. Brain scans reveal identical activity patterns whether something happens directly to an individual in real life or if they simply read about it closely. Furthermore, our brain does not differentiate between becoming really engrossed in reading something and experiencing that very thing firsthand. 

Through books, one can absorb lifetimes of insight while staying safely on the couch. The feelings, empathy, knowledge, and understanding stack up, one after another, which ultimately helps in building depth without danger. In an age where attention spans are degrading at a devastating rate, a habit of reading can counteract the diminishing rate of cognition in young children. Books offer a quiet space where thoughts can grow, contrary to the modern environment where screens are fabricated to pull one’s attention in every direction. In the present day, reading often means glancing at tweets, alerts, and fragments flashed fast across the screens of devices. 

On the other hand, stories ask for stillness instead. They draw readers into longer stretches of silence, where sentences build slowly and meaning hides beneath words that the readers must pay careful attention to understand deeply. This kind of focus softens tension, shaping the brain to stay present amidst tangled thoughts. Attention held this way becomes training in the long run, which can be compared to breath work for judgment and clarity. Reading a hard book or layered verse means pausing, waiting, and noticing what lies below each line. Such moments help individuals grasp the sight beyond slogans, opening room to question what first seems obvious. 

On the whole, literature does more than sharpen thinking and offer a range of other human benefits that aid in easing the daily travails that humans face. Human emotions are mostly tangled, which makes it difficult to put such feelings into words. Such emotions can range from longing to a random burst of happiness or a sadness that seeps into the very soul of a person. Writers name what seems impossible to put into words and describe each moment vividly so that readers can feel themselves represented in the words and stories. When a reader resonates with the words of the story, they recognize themselves in the characters. As such, pages hold mirrors that are shaped by someone else’s truth. 

Identical emotions 

One can feel comforted knowing that the same emotions or feelings that they are going through have been faced by someone else before.  As American writer James Baldwin put it beautifully, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive or who had ever been alive.”  

Literature facilitates this connection between people and helps in alleviating the pain and helps individuals become more appreciative of each other. It is important to understand that the time spent reading does not vanish but instead shapes human awareness in subtle layers. Resilience forms slowly in the mind, which is woven through diverse voices in the form of characters, met in silence during the time spent reading. People develop compassion not from effort but from repeated encounters with unfamiliar lives that they spend time getting to know about through books. Humanity persists most clearly where imagination is allowed room to breathe. 

(Chaulagain is a psychology student at St. Xavier's College, Maitighar, Kathmandu.)