Member-only story
If Your Social Skills Aren’t That Great, There’s Help at Hand
Immersing yourself in reading fiction is an excellent way to train your mind to understand social niceties
Do you feel that you aren’t socially adept? Do you find that anything you offer in a conversation doesn’t find its mark? Are you ill at ease with many people? There could be a simple cure for it. According to new studies, reading plenty of quality fiction is all that’s needed. Fiction has great ability to carefully train your mind in the ways in which other people’s minds work.
Some people simply do poorly interacting with others in social situations. Where the socially adept seem to know exactly what to say and when to say it, the less gifted always seem to miss the cue somewhere. They have trouble with timing, the right choice of thing to say and other problems. Much of what they have to offer in any conversation misses the mark. If this is you, recent research has a ray of delightful hope: scientists now believe that immersing yourself in reading fiction is an excellent way to train your mind to understand social niceties.
Dreaming by the Book
In the 1999 popular psychology release Dreaming by the Book, the author Elaine Scarry, who is a Harvard English professor, offers…
