Art and civic values: the role of fiction-reading

The quality of a civic life is to some extent dependent on its citizens’ capacity for empathy, imagination, and the appreciation of the varieties of experience that shape us. Many have argued that fictions of various kinds can enlarge these aspects of mind. Philosophers are among them, though they have rarely acknowledged that the claim needs serious empirical support. Psychologists, meanwhile, have been searching for the evidence. I reflect on a recent project across the disciplines of philosophy and psychology that sought to extend the evidence a bit, as well as providing a richer understanding of the explanatory options. At the end of our study we undertook a large-scale meta-analysis; I summarise our findings, commenting on their implications for bias, and their limitations. I address the unease people in the humanities sometimes express about this kind of empirical work. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)