On the Complexity of Literary and Popular Fiction

Abstract

Research findings in cognitive literary studies show that lifetime exposure to literary versus popular fiction has a differential association with social cognition processes such as psychological essentialism, attributional complexity, and, particularly, with Theory of Mind. Experimental findings further show that brief exposure to literary, but not popular fiction, boosts performance on Theory of Mind. These results are interpreted as stemming from the greater complexity of the characters and plots of literary fiction; a claim that is consistent with evidence that readers view literary fiction characters as more complex than popular fiction characters. Here we focus on style, and test whether said differential complexity finds a parallel in the language of these two types of fiction. Results of Natural Language Processing analyses on a corpus of literary and popular fiction texts confirm that literary fiction has greater lexical and syntax complexity than popular fiction.

Less Is More: How the Language of Fiction Fosters Emotion Recognition

“…Specifically, they classified finalists or winners of the National Book Award as literary and New York Times bestsellers as popular. Complementing and extending previous computational linguistic findings, it was found that compared to popular fiction, literary fiction was higher in both lexical and syntax complexity (Castano et al, 2023). The latter finding is of particular relevance, since mastering complex syntax has been found to be associated with greater Theory of Mind performance in both children (De Villiers & Pyers, 2002) and adults (Oesch & Dunbar, 2017).…”

“…Using a bottom-up approach, Koolen, van Dalen-Oskam et al (2020) found that high scores on a series of basic textual features (i.e., proportion of rare words, a lower proportion of dialogue, and longer sentences) were associated with ratings of literariness provided by readers. Castano et al (2023) collated a corpus of literary and popular fiction using the same criteria adopted in the research discussed above. Specifically, they classified finalists or winners of the National Book Award as literary and New York Times bestsellers as popular.…”

“…These two aspects, how fiction elicits emotions and emotional resonance with the fictional characters, and how it affects readers' ability to understand and infer emotions outside of the fictional context, are likely connected (see Schwerin & Lenhart, 2022). The connection is to be found in the various ways in which emotions and other mental states of the characters that appear in fiction are conveyed (Castano et al, 2023;Zunshine, 2006). In this essay, I focus specifically on how this affects readers' capacity to understand their own emotional life and that of others, that is, to accurately assess one's own and others' emotions.…”

Don’t Be Too Good at Reading Other People's Minds

“…Observing acts of altruism "has been found to result in what is termed 'moral elevation' which reflects extreme elevation in mood, increased energy, desire for affiliation, the motivation to do good things for other people, and the desire to become a better person" (Rhoads & Marsh, 2023; see also Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Note that, while this emotional response is overwhelmingly positive, it does not necessarily translate into any subsequent real-life altruistic behaviors (Breithaupt, 2019;Castano et al, 2023aCastano et al, , 2023bCurrie, 2016;Keen, 2007;Koopman, 2015). In this regard, I agree with Gregory Currie when he questions whether "exposure to such scenes in literature and film makes readers/viewers more altruistic," and who is open to the possibility that "fiction may sometimes depress" empathetic responses" (2016, p. 59).…”

“…Embedded thoughts and feelings are not limited to those that we attribute to characters. Some works, especially more "literary" as opposed to "popular" (Castano et al, 2020(Castano et al, , 2023b, may also depend on readers' awareness of mental states of narrators, authors, and implied readers (Zunshine, 2022). Embedded mental states can be explicitly spelled out (e.g., when asked to conjure up a happy memory, Harry Potter is "concentrating very hard on how he had felt when he'd realized he'd be leaving Privet Drive" [Rowling, 2004, p. 268]) or merely implied.…”