Reading broadly

Last week I finished reading, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life by Shigehiro Oishi. It had many interesting parts in it, though it did continue to be in essence a list of various psychological studies. I had mentioned this when I introduced the book previously, but since the studies moved into ones I hadn't heard of, that was okay. (There are some psychological studies that I will be thrilled if I never have to read another synopsis of ever again.) In fact, some of them were so interesting, I marked them as something I might want to share with you, my readers. Then I realized that maybe a full week's worth of posts dealing with studies found in this book isn't really what people want to read, so I have chosen just one of them. This particular excerpt made the cut because it also touches on another favorite topic of mine which is reading good books out loud to your children. 

I'll dive in.

"While at the University of Virginia, I [the author of the book] had the chance to work with two students, Erin Westgate and Nick Buttrick[.]   .... We wondered if reading all kinds of books early on in life helped readers appreciate more complexity and lead an intellectually rich life. So we asked over 5,000 people about their reading habits during childhood, their current cognitive styles, and their perceived levels of psychological richness. We assumed their reading in general would be associated with a more flexible cognitive style and more psychological richness. our findings were more intricate than we had anticipated.

First, as predicted, individuals who grew up reading a lot of literary fiction were indeed more attributionally complex (i.e., able to think of multiple reasons why someone might behave a certain way) and led a psychologically richer life as adults than those who did not. Second, unexpectedly, those who grew up reading a lot of romance novels were significantly less attributionally complex than those who did not. these readers seemed to 'essentialize' to a greater degree than those who had read less romance. For instance, early romance readers tended to hold a more simplistic view of the world: Joes is a jerk, Jill is an angel, baseball is a bore, opera is for old people, and so on. In contrast, those who grew up reading a lot of literary fiction were less likely to essentialize and more likely to think that Joe could be a jerk to some but also sweet and generous to homeless people, for example. Third, these findings were replicated using other measures, such as the essentialism scale. The findings remained significant after statistically controlling for participants' age, gender, education, income, and political orientation -- the link between reading a lot of literary fiction and cognitive complexity was there but not because those readers were more educated, older, or more politically liberal." (pp. 100-101)

First, let's address the elephant in the room quotation: It feels as though he is leaving out some key parts of his study because to specifically refer to romance books makes this feel overly gendered since the vast majority of romance readers are women. How do you control for gender if you're just looking at romance books as an option. It makes me think something was left out. Do westerns or pulp sci-fi or books such as Clive Cussler's fall into that same tendency to essentialize? And if so, could he have mentioned this in his short explanation? Because otherwise it does kind of seem as though it's mostly women who don't read broadly enough to be attributionally complex. Yes, this was a bit irksome, as was a lot of the writing style. The information was interesting enough that I kept reading despite this. I'll admit it was touch and go at the beginning. 

But the concept behind the poorly written explanation is interesting. Reading can broaden our view of the world and the people around us if we read things that allow us to have our views broadened. If we read only books that feel safe and comfortable and predictable, they are not going to stretch us. Please note that I am not condemning or looking down upon reading books that are safe, comfortable, and predictable. Sometimes we desperately need that, I know I do, though my book candy of choice is the mystery genre. This is a both/and, not and either/or issue, in my opinion. Being stretched is not always comfortable, but it is important. Reading books about people or places or events very different from ourselves is about the only way I know that we can walk in someone else's shoes. 

And this becomes doubly true with our children. Our policy has always been that our children are allowed to read anything as long as they read broadly, figuring that anything questionable will be cancelled out by so many other viewpoints. It's nice to have a study that essentially proves our policy. But children, too, enjoy safe and predictable which is why series during the late elementary school and middle school years are so vastly popular. This is where reading out loud is key. I can read books out loud to my children that they would never pick up on their own. And by all of us sharing the book together, we can then have a shared experience which can be discussed, offering still more viewpoints. 

Take our current teatime read aloud as an example. We are now over halfway through the 1349 page book, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It is extremely complex and one of the main story lines of the book is the Zamindari Bill from the 1950's in India which proposed that the government would take (and pay for) the traditional land holdings of titled people and give those lands to the individual workers who actually farmed the land. (This is a very simplistic and possible not 100% accurate description.) Most of the large land owners were Muslim and the government workers who crafted the bill were Hindu. This tension between different religious groups in India is a theme throughout the whole book and through the various storylines, with the story switching between a Hindu character then a Muslim character. You cannot look at something like the Zamindari Bill in a simplistic manner because the author doesn't let you. Would any of my children have chosen to pick this book up on their own? Probably not, and if they had, there is a good chance that it would have been put down fairly quickly. It is not an easy read and I often stop and make sure everyone knows what is going on as well as explaining some cultural reference they might not be familiar with. But spending so much time being shown conflicts from multiple different viewpoints is priceless and worth every hour we have spent with the book. 

A study such as this also makes me even more concerned by people who are afraid of books, or more specifically, books they might not agree with or show them something they are not comfortable with. If your viewpoints or religious beliefs cannot stand to rub up against something that disagrees with those viewpoints or beliefs, then how strong are they really? It isn't actually the books, but the people the books are about that that individual is afraid of. And when we are afraid of people... well, just read the news to see where that gets you.