“For a long time we’ve been talking about the benefits of reading with respect to vocabulary, literacy, and these such things. We’re now beginning to see that there’s a much broader impact.”
— Keith Oatley, a scientist at The University of Toronto, conducted an experiment in which he showed that the simple act of reading Chekhov’s short story “The Lady With the Little Dog” slightly changed people’s personalities in scientifically measurable ways.
“It helps provide quantitative, empirical, scientific evidence for a lot of the benefits of reading,” he says.
Their blog OnFiction has more on the psychological benefits of literature, if, like me, you find that this stuff makes you feel better about all that time you spend writing and reading.
