Becoming Our Favourite Characters

If you could relate to Abigayle’s plight in the cold or felt pity for the dire situation of a helpless animal, you might be pretty empathetic. A key detail in how fictional characters, and stories, can influence people in the real world.

First off, what is empathy?

It can be defined as an internal emotional reaction based on someone else’s emotional state. You understand and / or share another person’s feelings and emotions. It’s genuine, not faked — that would be closer to manipulation.

People are typically egocentric, that’s simply the way we’re designed, but the supramarginal gyrus wants to correct our self-centeredness automatically. When there’s a disruption to this section of the brain, people are more likely to lack empathy and project their own feelings onto other people.

Furthermore, researchers found it was easier for someone to empathize with another person if they both experienced the same sensations — usually lack of luxury or enduring something uncomfortable with both visual and tactile sensations.

Recent research suggests that people can develop their empathy and compassion to some degree. Supposedly, this can be achieved by placing oneself in uncomfortable situations regularly. Some such examples include physical activities, mindfulness meditation (specific to kindness), and volunteering.

By example of this, even if we haven’t experienced the same situations as the fictional people we are able to engage in empathetic behaviour through clear writing that displays their emotional state.

It’s generally easier to relate to these characters over real people because in the non-fictional world, people are taught to hide their emotions and thoughts.

We have to gauge what another person is feeling based off our own experiences. In a story, it’s all presented to the audience in a more intimate way.

Have you ever read a book and felt absolutely empowered afterward?

The next level up from feeling empathy for characters we grow attached to is called experience-taking. It’s where we relate so strongly the fictional person that we take on their attributes, perhaps for a short time or sometimes long-term. Essentially, with E-T you are replacing the character with yourself. It’s important to note that experience-taking is done subconsciously. Don’t worry, it doesn’t happen on a regular basis. In order for experience-taking to occur the reader must deeply absorb themselves in the story, almost forgetting their own sense of self.

Yes. In one of the experiments, those who read a story about voting days before an election felt more likely to vote.

If the characteristics of the protagonist are exhibited earlier in the narrative, and the readers share some commonalities (such as ethnicity, attending the same school, etc.), it is more likely E-T will occur.

When fewer commonalities are present, there is less E-T because the reader doesn’t have their own frame of reference. Remember how we gauge other people based off our experience? Same thing.

However, in two specific experiments, it appears that when the protagonist’s sexuality or ethnicity were introduced later on, and the reader was of the opposite inclination or different ethnicity, there was a higher score for experience-taking.

In the groups who learned of their differences to the character earlier, lower rates of experience-taking were reported. Interestingly though, they did report feeling less bias toward that ethnicity or orientation in real life.

The long and short of it all is that people require empathy to relate to people. In order to relate to people, we have to compare our personal experiences to what they tell us of their lives.

It’s easier to do that in a book where it’s all explained to the reader. So, when people let go of reality and relate to the character in some fashion, they are capable of taking on their attributes in real life, influencing their world one breath at a time.

Everything people listen to, watch, or read is absorbed and influences them on a subconscious level. We assimilate and adapt to real people, so why not fiction?

Think of everything you’ve ever read. Which ones have prompted you to try something new or different? Perhaps it was martial arts, archery, standing up to a bully, walking, journaling… the list goes on.