• Different Stories: How Literary and Popular Genre Fiction Relate to Folk Psychology and Folk Sociology

    Author(s):
    David Kidd (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature, TC Science and Literature
    Item Type:
    Conference paper
    Conf. Title:
    The 2016 MLA Annual Convention
    Conf. Org.:
    Modern Language Association
    Tag(s):
    cognitive science, mla16, Psychology
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6MP44
    Abstract:
    This paper proposes that readers understand the social content of fiction using the same sociocognitive processes they use in the real world. Much of the extant empirical work on the effects of reading fiction on social cognition have focused on individuating processes, such as theory of mind and empathy. Yet, decades of social psychological work point to the central roles of other forms of social cognition, such as stereotyping. Distinguishing between the first sort of social competence, "folk psychology," and the other, "folk sociology", helps to create a framework for making more specific predictions about the social psychological processes involved in and affected by reading fiction. Psychological studies of readers and other audiences of fiction are reviewed in terms of this framework, and initial empirical work to address related hypotheses is presented.
    Metadata:
    Status:
    Published
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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