Low empathy linked to low reading?

[Guest guest]

In the January/February edition of Scientific American Mind, there is an article about the decline of empathy of American youth. According to the Personality and Social Psychology Review, published online at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, college students' self-reported empathy has declined 30% since 1980 with a sharp drop in the last 10 years. At the same time, students's self-reported narcissism is at all time highs.

One theory for this is because over the last 30 years people have begun to live more solitary lives and have joined groups less often. I'm not really sure that I buy that one given the large number of groups, sports, etc., at most schools and mandatory members requirements at most, not to mention the necessity of having them if you want to get into college (which really doesn't make sense to me). However, I've got another post that can shed some light on one aspect of this. Still, most people are highly socialized, I don't think that accounts for the drop in college student empathy.

The article states that the number of Americans reading for pleasure has dropped below 50% for the first time in the last 10 years and the drop is sharpest amongst college age adults. A study by A. Mar of York University in Toronto, one amongst many studies, showed that the more preschool age children read, the better they could predict the emotions of others, while other studies show that adults who read less fiction have less empathy. Now, this is certainly generalities, meaning it may be true for most but not all. However, it does make sense. It has been over the last 10 years that students have been getting laptops instead of books at school and libraries redone as media centers. To an extent over the same time, more course work has been piled on but with little real added value to show for it, which means less time for reading. Then there are all the video games, the online world, etc. that also eat up reading time.

I think reading probably teaches empathy because most stories, the good ones anyway, put you in the characters's heads. You live their lives basically and you see what they see, think what they think and feel what they feel. In others words, its like living the stories in your mind, like simulations or training for empathy. I'm not sure that is conveying what I mean, I'm having a tough time putting it exactly into the right words. So, let's compare that to video games. Most video games as about competition, sports games in particular. Sports games are the biggest sellers though fighting games are also common. So essentially the kids that play them aren't learning empathy, but compete, win and me first. I'm not saying that's all bad but it could help explain some loss of empathy.

This article was an interesting find since we had just recently been discussing something along these lines. I'm not sure if it is available online yet or not.