"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty." (20.51-52)
— To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
"Theory of Mind, or ToM, is the capacity to infer the thoughts and emotions of others," Kidd said. A highly developed ToM corresponds to a strong sense of empathy. The results of the experiments were consistent: Reading literary fiction improves ToM.
A highly developed ToM, however, does not always translate to kindness or make one more moral. In fact, the opposite is often the case. "Bullies have a very developed ToM," Kidd said. "Which makes sense. If you want to manipulate or harass someone effectively, that requires a heightened sense of how their thoughts and emotions work."
So while the experiments didn't show that literature makes someone more moral, "the one thing we can say for sure is that literary fiction makes everything more complex," Kidd concluded.
And in fact, Moya noted, since the earliest days of the novel, literature has been seen by many as "profoundly corrupting."
According to Landy, literature plays on our emotions instead of giving us rational reasons to adopt new beliefs, so we can easily be manipulated by it. Getting people to change their beliefs based on emotions is not an unambiguously positive thing: "When I do it, it's called persuasion. When you do it, it's called rhetoric. When they do it, it's called propaganda."
Landy added that morality is not necessarily good for literature. "One of my pet peeves is the idea that literature is either morally improving or useless," he said. "There are all kinds of other things – hugely important things – that literature can do for us," like enchanting or consoling us, training us mentally, offering models of self-fashioning, or simply renewing our contact with the world.
Instead, Landy suggested a better approach to literature would be to teach people to be cautious and selective about everything they read. "Let the truth do its work. And if people aren't yet capable of discerning truth from lies, help them. Cultivate their ability to separate good from bad arguments."
*Justin Tackett is a doctoral candidate in English at Stanford
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