The idea that reading literature changes the reader seems as old as literature itself. Through the ages philosophers, writers, and literary scholars have suggested it affects norms, empathic ability, self-concept, beliefs, etc. This book examines what we actually know about these effects. And it finds strong evidence for the old claims. However, it remains unclear what aspects of the reading experience are responsible for these effects. Applying methods of the social sciences to this particular problem of literary theory, this book presents a psychological explanation based upon the conception of literature as a moral laboratory. A series of experiments examines whether imagining oneself in the shoes of characters affects beliefs about what it must be like to be someone else, and whether it affects beliefs about consequences of behavior. The results have implications for the role literature could play in society, for instance, in an alternative for traditional moral education.

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Research in experimental aesthetics suggests a relation between complexity and novelty on the one hand and hedonic value on the other (Berlyne, 1980). Defining foregrounding as deviation from daily language, the concept seems closely associated with novelty, and therefore a relation may be expected between the degree of deviation and readers' aesthetic appreciation. Also, deviation is assumed to be the key to understanding style, and leads readers in their interpretation of a text. These hypotheses are confirmed by recent evidence (Miall and Kuiken, 1994; Hakemulder, 2004; Zyngier, van Peer and Hakemulder, in press). The present study aims to enhance control over potential factors, refining the assessment of readers' background variables, and excluding interference of text factors other than deviation. For this purpose six versions of one poetry line were written, with an ascending degree of foregrounding from the first to the sixth line. More than 300 participants were assigned randomly to a total of 13 groups. Some read one of the six lines of a poem. To other groups, adjacent lines were presented hierarchically or in a large difference in degree of foregrounding (four lines apart in the hierarchy). Participants evaluated the single line they had been assigned to, or compared their two lines on a number of items measuring aesthetic appreciation, evaluation of aesthetic structure, and perceived cognitive, emotive, social and attitudinal impact. In addition, they completed a questionnaire on reading habits. It was hypothesized that higher degrees of deviation would lead to higher scores on these measures. Part of the predictions was confirmed by the results.

This article approaches from an empirical perspective the interrelation between foregrounding and complexity in the evaluation of literary texts. For this purpose, a reading experiment is reported. Participants from three cultures (Brazil, Egypt, and the Netherlands) read three texts of different degrees of complexity and evaluated them on a number of variables. Subsequently, they re-read and evaluated the texts once more. The hypothesis was that complex texts would be rated higher on a second than on a first reading; the opposite was predicted for the text with the lowest complexity. Results confirmed this hypothesis for only one group of participants, which raises questions about the nature of a “reading culture.”

Though foregrounding theory was developed to understand responses to both literature and film, empirical research concentrated exclusively on reader response, until now. The present article examines whether `literariness' in film causes the same effects as those established for literature. In two experiments participants were shown one scene from Shakespeare film adaptations, either low or high in foregrounded elements. It was expected that showing these materials twice would reveal differences in levels of foregrounding effects. It was found that seeing high-foregrounding scenes twice was more enjoyable and made spectators perceive more significant aspects than the low-foregrounding versions of the same scenes did. A third experiment examined the extent to which a foregrounding effect requires spectators' awareness of a `background'. Participants in the experimental group were shown a conventional dinner scene (background) before they saw an unconventional one. The control group saw the same unconventional scene but first a (conventional) shootout scene. Results showed that the unconventional scene was considered more interesting and drew participants' attention more in the experimental group than in the control group. Also, the first group concentrated more on form aspects of the scene than the control group. These results present strong evidence that deviation leaves clear traces of foregrounding effects in spectators' responses.