Reading and Empathy: Qualitative insights into adolescents' experiences with fiction books

Abstract

Fiction books offer opportunities for readers to gain insight into fictional characters' perspectives, lives, and experiences, and in doing so, have the potential to support their empathy. This article provides novel insights from semi-structured interviews with 37 (27 female, 10 male, aged 12–14 years) regular readers of fiction from two high schools in Scotland. A data-driven inductive thematic analysis approach illustrated the cognitive and affective ways in which adolescents empathise with fictional characters; how feelings of empathy can transfer beyond fiction to real-life others; how feelings of empathy can personally enrich readers and support their social relationships; and how book content and writing style can facilitate readers' empathy. However, while many adolescent readers shared examples of how reading had supported their empathy, others did not, suggesting that adolescent readers' may read for different purposes. Implications for teachers, librarians and others interested in supporting adolescents' literacy practices, experiences and empathy are discussed, in addition to future research directions.