Independent Reading Blog #3

1/25/2019

Today, I would like for you to read and respond to the article, "In the Minds of Others" by Keith Oatley. You should read and annotate the print article that I give you, but I will also include a link here. This article further develops the ideas from Independent Reading Blog #2 and will be of use later when we finish our Independent Reading Unit.

Your critical analysis of this article should:
-briefly summarize the main points of the article
-identify the author's argument
-evaluate the author's success by analyzing how the author uses:
1. textual evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims
2. reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence
3. stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed
-conclude with a strong comment upon the value of the author's topic/argument.

Requirements:
-typed, MLA style, 500-1,000 words (about 2 to 4 pages)
-posted here on the classroom blog
-AND to Turnitin by 11:59pm on Sunday night, 1/27/2019

Click on the image above to go to an electronic copy of "In the Minds of Others" by Keith Oatley.

Adesola Bamigbaiye

1/27/2019 07:14:54 pm

In Keith Oatley’s article In the Minds of Others, he argues that we need to read more fiction because reading fiction has been shown to boost the efficiency of the social interaction of children and adults, making them feel empathy easier and become better at reading facial features and body language.
To support his claim, Oatley seamlessly and successfully integrates evidence detailing experiments of different sizes, ages, and procedures to truly show how fiction improves different parts of the mind. In the experiment with 94 adults, some who read fiction and some who read nonfiction, they found that, when assessed on emotion perception and social cognition, those who read more fiction were more successful than those who didn’t. He also uses the example in which children are asked which snack they want then are told the toy wants a different snack. Those who correctly give an answer different to the one they want were the children who read more stories and watched more movies.
Oatley also successfully used reasoning to explain his evidence and make it easy to understand. Following each piece of textual evidence, he took his time in thoroughly relating his evidence to his claim and explaining how his evidence supported his claim. This superior reasoning ability is shown when he spends an entire paragraph going over the results of an experiment involving 252 adults and their Big Five personality traits. Not only does he support his claim by showing that fiction led to higher “empathetic and theory-of-mind abilities,” but he also knocks out any counter-arguments by explaining that, even after statistically subtracting the openness trait, there was still a correlation between fiction reading and the success level of the other traits.
Finally, Oatley is able to add power to his ideas by boosting his ethos. As discussed in the previous paragraph, Oatley was able to discredit a counter-argument someone might have had. This adds power because it shows that, not only is Oatley’s claim supported, but he is so sure of his argument that he is able to predict counter-arguments and discredit them. This boosts his ethos by showing how confident he is in his claim, which makes readers more confident in him as well.
Oatley’s claim isn’t unique. It’s becoming more and more obvious that people who read fiction have a tighter grasp on the ropes regarding social interaction. This is especially important today because people of all ages are becoming less socially aware, despite the fact that we are spending most of our time on social media. That disconnectedness is keeping us from truly understanding each other because what you see on social media is what people choose to show you. A book of fiction is often raw and unapologetic, giving us the feeling we don’t get from other people. Even in schools, where cellular devices are usually banned, students spend most of their time reading educational and non-fictional articles or dealing with so much schoolwork that they don’t even have the time to sit down and enjoy a work of fiction. Depriving students of this mental break is obviously damaging for when they go into the real world because they’ll be less suited to interact with others. This is why Oatley’s argument is so valuable today – we need to fix our mistake and learn to be with others properly by reading more fiction.

Liv Lam

1/27/2019 08:26:30 pm

In the article, “In the Minds of Others”, the author, Keith Oatley, discusses a number of experiments that test the influence of fiction or nonfiction pieces of literature on a reader’s behavior, mindset, and experiences. Oatley research that claims that the reading of fiction literature has the ability to build one’s empathy as we connect with the fictitious characters; this is due to the idea that when we read, we create social simulations in our mind that can help us in reality. The improvement of empathy from reading fiction also plays into hand with the reader’s level of openness, understanding of their own emotions, and alterations in one’s personality. Oatley argues that reading, fiction literature specifically, frequently can significantly improve someone’s social skills and understanding of oneself. Oatley supports his argument through his description of the number of studies and experiments he and his colleagues at the University of Toronto have produced, explaining the significance of these studies in relation to his argument, and appealing to ethos.
Oatley goes in depth to explain the many experiments and research he and his team has gathered over a number of years. One of the numerous studies he discussed is his reading and the Big Five personality traits experiment in 2009; this had been a repeat of his original study published in 2006, which is significant because it strengthens his argument as he is not making a conclusion based on one experiment. In his 2009 experiment, they studied a group of 252 adults and their reading habits (fiction vs nonfiction). Rather than analyzing them based on their emotion perception and social cognition, Oatley and those conducting the study analyzed them based on their Big Five personality traits: extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, as well as their social networks and levels of loneliness/isolation. Oatley includes different studies that not only looks at adults reading, but they address other age groups, like children. In 2010, Chris Moore and Jennifer Tackett conducted an experiment where children were tested on their theory of mind: the ability to distinguish the mental state of oneself to others and the understanding that other people have different mental states from one’s own. The experiments Oatley describes all include the idea of investigating the influence of fiction on someone’s behavior and attitude.
Oatley provides an explanation and reasoning after each description of the experiments discussed. The number of experiments and studies Oatley includes is significant because it shows that he did not create a conclusion based on one study, but rather collectively used results from different times and people to establish a coherent argument that is supported by all studies. As a result of the 2009 study, as explained by Oatley, there had been a significantly large relationship between how often someone reads fiction and their levels of empathy and theory of mind. The 2010 study concluded that children who listened to more stories and watched more movies (two sources that produce more fictitious scenarios, were able to distinguish their own desires from a toy’s than children who watched more TV. The results of all the experiments included involved a relationship between the amount of fiction someone experiences and their levels of social skills.
Oatley establishes ethos in his claim because not only does he support his own argument, but he addresses the counterargument, and refutes it. After explaining his first experiment on the influence of nonfiction/fiction on social behavior in 2006, Oatley says “still the association we found between reading fiction and social ability could have simply reflected an affinity for fiction among people with good social skills”. He then goes on to explain how he repeated the experiment in 2009 to see if the correlation between fiction and social skills was still there, and it was. Addresses the opponent/other side adds power to his ideas because he is aware of what the other side has to criticize about his evidence, but he addresses it before opponents can use if against him and weaken his argument. He also strengthens his own argument as he gathers even more evidence that supports his claim of fiction improving social skills.
Oatley’s argument is significant because shifts the idea of fiction as simply an escape for those who prefer social isolation, to a tool that can improve social skills in the real world. As people emphasize the importance of nonfiction to enhance our knowledge on a certain topics, the importance of fiction to enhance our understanding of empathy and oneself must be emphasized as well. Ironically, the activity most people take part in during times of isolation can in turn aid people in socializing with others and deepen their understanding of social situati

Alyssa John

1/27/2019 09:48:05 pm

Fiction, as a genre of novel, has become increasingly important and more appreciated as a tool to help people develop. In this piece Keith Oatley tries to explain that “just as computer simulations have helped us understand perception, learning, and thinking, stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general.” There are many stereotypes about those who read many books such as that they are “loners” or “lack social skills”. It seems like Keith Oatley wanted to know the accuracy of all these assumptions about “bookworms” and “fiction readers” and tested to see if the assumptions had any truth to them. The main point of the article, ”In the minds of Others”, by Oatley is that fiction can help one better understand humans and have increased social skills. This idea is elaborated on in many parts of the article that highlights different things that would lead someone to have good social skills such as having a well-developed theory of mind, having strong empathy, and having a good sense of self. Oakley uses a psychological standpoint to prove his hypothesis’.
The article consists of various psychological experiments he conducted to help prove his ideas and assumptions. The first one was called “Social Simulation” and was about “ Raymond A. Mar [deciding] to challenge the popular conception that people who read a lot of fiction are socially withdrawn bookworms who use novels as an escape from reality”. The psychology graduate student, along with his team assessed the reading habits of many adults, separating fiction from nonfiction. Then tested the adults on two types of social skills: emotion perception and social cognition and found that even a small amount of time dedicated to reading fiction can temporarily improve a person's social skills.
The next piece of evidence used was about Theory of Mind which is the ability to understand the perspectives of other people and how it continues to grow throughout life. Oatley had an idea that reading novels might be a result of having a strong theory of mind and to test this possibility, in 2009 he published a repeat of his earlier investigation with a separate group of adults”. He measured participants' “Big Five personality traits: extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness” and “people who scored high on the personality trait of openness to experience did read slightly more fiction
than those who scored higher on other traits...we still found a large and significant relationship between the of fiction people read and their empathic and theory-of-mind abilities; it
looked as if reading fiction improved social skills, not the other way round”. This data is also represented in children, in a particular study “ they found that the more fictional stories preschoolers listened to and the more fictional movies they saw, the better they were on five tests of children's theory of mind” showing that fiction, not just fiction novels, help with the overall development of people.
The article discussed fiction’s effect on empathy when it shows that “the emotional empathy that is critical to our day-to-day relationships also enables us to picture ourselves living as the characters do when we read fiction”. This statement is proven with a 2009 study from Washington University in St.Louis where a group of psychologist asked 28 participants to go into an fMRI scanner and read a short story, “when a subject read about something the protagonist
did, the researchers found that the reader's brain responded as if he or she were performing the same action”. This, along with data from other studies mentioned in the article showed that people feel their emotions in response to the actions and circumstances the writer of different stories describes and these emotions keep us turning the pages. This, in turn, helps people in social situations because our brains are trained through the use of fiction in television or books to react and relate to others.
Oatley is successful in getting his point across through the appeal of logos by providing a large amount of related data that ultimately proves that fiction does teach social skills and provides people with a better ability to understand the world around them. This article explains thoroughly how we can develop more empathy when we read about fictitious characters and connect with them, and how “The brain's emotional responses to good literature do more than forge a connection with a nonexistent personality -- they can even alter the reader's sense of self”. Fiction is like a tool that stimulates the brain and assists people in the real world by learning from the actions and emotions of the characters they have connected to in

Julia Andrews

1/27/2019 10:36:41 pm

In Keith Oatley’s article, In the Minds of Others, he displays the impacts of nonfiction and fiction literature on those interpreting it. The author introduces his prevalent argument that those who read fiction tend to have stronger means of social communication and understandings. Oatley also suggests that reading things of this nature can improve the ability of one to empathize with and interpret another being’s body language and expressions.
Throughout the article, Oatley references several experiments and studies done to reveal the effects of fiction on a person. The results of one study showed that “the more fiction people read, the better they were at perceiving emotion in the eyes and, to a lesser extent, correctly interpreting social cues” (Oatley 2). By reading fiction often, one becomes more capable of understanding the social world around them in that they can mentally experience many different situations. In reading fiction, the imagination is involved; this enables people to put themselves in the shoes of the character and react as if they are part of the story.
“The emotional empathy that is critical to our day-to-day relationships also enables us to picture ourselves living as the characters do when we read fiction… recent brain scans reveal that we internalize what a character experiences by mirroring those feelings and actions ourselves” (Oatley 4). The author exemplifies the idea that in reading fiction, people tend to both gain and use empathetic strategies to understand the story. This emotion can then be applied to their everyday life, where their benefits of reading fiction is displayed.
By using the detailed evidence that Oatley did, he successfully supported his claim of fictional literature improving one’s social abilities. He followed each piece of evidence and research with extensive reasoning to help the reader in understanding his points. More specifically, in regards to the study done with the “Big Five,” the author was very thorough in his reasoning — going on to explain with a few paragraphs. In this study, two groups of adults read the story of a love affair, however, one group read the story as it was written — fiction — while the other group read it as a divorce court report. “Only the story version seemed to enable readers to empathize…The properties of fictional narrative invite identification with characters in ways that nonfiction usually does not” (Oatley 5). By explaining what the experiment revealed and then going on to explain it further, the author conveyed his full interpretation and comfort with his claim. This persuasive technique of meticulous explanation proves Keith Oatley’s understanding and persistence to prove his point.
The claim made by Keith Oatley is one of coherence and logic. The idea that the author obtains has been proven to be true time and time again, and he has not come close to failing at presenting the evidence. In addition to arguing a valid point, Oatley combatted the idea that those who most commonly read fiction are less socially inclined and provided evidence as to why.

Ivor Valdivia

1/27/2019 11:28:00 pm

Millions of people around the world consume fiction through media on a daily basis. Movies and TV shows have always consistently found a place in contemporary and pop culture. But most people's reasoning would for consuming fiction would be as entertainment or engaging in an interesting narrative. A lot of people fail to understand what someone could gain from any form of stories of fiction. Keith Oatley shows us his ability to understand fiction more than most people in his article “In the Minds of Others”, where he highlights many different skills one could gain from fiction that can be applied to our everyday life. Whether it’s to Build Empathy and Understand Points of view better, Oatley proves how Fiction can help us understand Humans better. As we understand them better, we can learn to perform better in social situations we otherwise wouldn’t. At the end of the day, Fiction can help us better develop our personality and become better human beings than we otherwise would be without fiction.

Unlike Math and Sciences, Fiction cannot be judged on a linear analytical level. There is no one clear answer or motive to discern from an author of a classic piece. However, Oatley manages to bring multiple heavily-researched evidence from scientists and psychologists to further prove his point. All of these experiments show real world results of the impact of Fiction, with no bias or ambiguity occurring from these tests. He creates the comparison between fiction and computers. Saying, “Just as computer simulations have helped us understand perception, learning and thinking, stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general” (Oatley). He manages to appeal to people who prefer to rely on concrete and un-abstract methods of understanding which is more the group who more commonly disapprove with Fiction. Oatley understands that not everyone has an abstract way of thinking, so he relates his evidence to reputable and reliable sources of information to reduce the possibility of Subjectivity. Many experiments are cited throughout the article. On one experiment, scientists measured how social aptitude can be affected by reading either fiction or nonfiction. “Mar assigned 303 adults to read either a short story or an essay from the new yorker. Then he gave all of them tests of both analytical and social reasoning” (Oatley). By including the analytical group and non-fiction, Oatley is showing the different improvements one goes through when reading different types of writing. This experiment showed us that, “Even a brief bout of reading fiction can temporarily improve a person’s social skills” (Oatley). This improvement can of course be better developed over time with consistent consumption of Fiction.

One very crucial thing that Oatley does, which greatly strengthens the credibility of his claims, is the way that he refutes counter-arguments in an unbiased way with very clear and respectable reasoning. One common thought about fiction is that its enjoyment is strictly solitary and cannot be understood when done in a social environment. Oatley disagrees. But instead of using subjective reasoning to refute the claim, he introduces an experiment that proves why the former claim is a misconception. Him and Mar found a relation between reading a lot of fiction and having better social skills. However, every good experiment never happens just once. He eventually recreated the experiment years later and managed to get very similar results. Further cementing his claim and completely refuting the statement it was testing against.

As we move deeper and deeper into an information-based society, it's important for us to preserve the arts of literature and fiction as a means of understanding society more. Oatley is able to persuade multiple types of people about the importance and value that reading fiction can do to someone. Whether it's to understand people more and build empathy, or to perform better in social situations, Fiction helps us with everything in life that cannot be explained with formulas and evidence. As Robin Williams says in the Film Dead Poets Society, “medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for”

Shameer khan

1/27/2019 11:28:20 pm

Since the beginning of our civilization, stories became a part of our social lives. As time went ahead and our societies started to advance towards progression, the stories saw a huge advancement in them and became more and more advanced, along the humans. During this advancement the stories got distributed into genres and one of those genre was “fiction”. If we look at our modern history “fiction” saw a huge popularity from the time of roman empire to islamic golden age and europe in middle ages. Shakespeare is regarded as “The king of Fiction” by many people in the modern era because of his style of using his imagination(fiction) and comparing it with the reality.

Coming from a family which thinks that reading science books and solving mathematics equations are gonna help me find a right path in my life have stressed me to a point where I wanna revolt against this ‘myth’ and show them the truth and make them realize how wrong sometimes we can be even as a parent. The author has used an angry tone in her article, sometimes the tone is reaching a point, where one thinks that the author is fighting for the rights of fiction, raising her voice so that people can know the truth what ‘fiction’ really is. Looking at the essay, the author has dissected her essay and each of those dissected parts of the article contain the message; many articles we have come across are mostly written in one paragraph which are just like ‘going from USA to EUROPE’ meaning that your whole journey is different, there is nothing that will occur again which you have encountered before. Author is a smart woman, she knows people are can be really stubborn and sometimes it’s difficult for them to accept the truth because you know they are gonna die or they will be cursed. So for her evidence she uses ‘psychology’ to open the eyes of the people, this is her proof. She almost tells all the experiments ever conducted by the top psychologists, but first she tells how these people used to think that ‘fiction’ is a joke! Haha they have opened their eyes. Knowing a certain truth, debunking a certain myth always has been a really difficult task in our ‘history and present’ but if you keep on fighting you can find the truth, the author keeps her stance and knows that she will win this fight. Her argument in the article is very simple fiction is the powerhouse of our lives, great people just don’t create great things by solving math equations but by thinking out of their set boundaries. Fiction has not only been proved to actually enhance the development of a child but also an adult! Fiction allows you to convert your reality into your imagination, hence creating a paradise. If you wanna solve a problem or find a darn solution or make impossible possible then take advice from fiction “Cross the damn boundary”. There are many great fiction books which tell us about our reality and the most astonishing part is that you get to see the real side of a story, unfortunately which sometimes non-fiction either corrupts it or doesn’t show the full side.

The author is asking us to open our eyes and to wake up and debunk the so called myth we believe in. Before an end I wanna beg the parents that if you want your child to become a legend you gotta let them read and watch fiction. The whole article has been summarized in two words “think broader”.

Jemmea Jean-Gilles

1/27/2019 11:44:09 pm

In Keith Oatley's article “In the Mind of Others, he addresses the impact of fiction on the readers minds. Oatley appeals to logos by using multiple studies to support his argument that reading has a positive impact on the social skills of the readers. The author notes that by immersing oneself into a fictional world, they are able to increase their empathy and decrease egocentrism.
Oatley mentions a common misconception about avid readers saying that they tend to be socially reclusive. He retorts this statement by stating that according to a study done by the University of Toronto, testing the social skills of people who read a lot of fiction, they “have better social skills than those who read little or none.” The author makes the practical connection that this is due to fiction being a simulation of social situations so readers are trained to deal with social situations every time they are reading fiction. Reading fiction allows the readers to immerse themselves into another person's life and see things from their perspective. This is why the “imagined worlds of fiction build(s) empathy.”
Oatley uses another study in children to further his claim about fiction being healthy for social development. The study conducted by Dalhousie University with preschool children showed that children who listened to stories a lot were able to understand other people's desires more. This same result was not however consistent with people who watched a lot of television. Oatley stated that the reason for this was due to the lack of investment in motives for the protagonist in television shows.
The author concludes his article by explaining what occurs when a reader reads a work of fiction. Because a reader can not experience the characters emotions, they create abstractions of emotions within the story based on their own experiences. The intensity to which a reader reacts to a piece of fiction is based on what they personally have experienced and how they may relate to a character. Our ability to empathize with a character is further deepened when reading literature as opposed to watching television or watching movies because of the time that is spent reading. According to Oatley, because of the time spent reading readers become more “open and receptive about others in general.” The readers can empathize with the character when they understand their circumstances and have time to realize their motives. This translates to how a reader experiences interactions outside of fiction because they develop interpersonal skills and empathy.
Oatley's claim is definitely valid and important in our modern society. Being able to empathize with people is a skill that when developed helps us advance socially. Empathy is what allows us to be humane, we can connect with each other and value other people's experiences and opinions. Our ability to vicariously experience other people’s emotions is not only important in terms of one on one interactions, but is also important in terms of globalization. We live in a world of conflict and polarity, however if empathy was more widespread, even through the means of reading more fiction, it would allow communities to come together.

alexander santana

1/28/2019 12:00:48 am

In the article “In the Minds of Others” by Oatley Keith, explains the benefits of reading fiction books and stories. He argues that fiction books improve social ties and change personality.
There has been research that shows improvement in social skills and understanding of other human beings. “Reading stories can actually improve your social skills by helping you better understand other human beings” (Keith 1). This helps show that fictional stories/books can help people better understand their peers when they react to situations. A study that was conducted and them published in 2006 also showed that people who read more fiction were capable of feeling emotion through their heart rather than their emotions. “We found that… better they were at perceiving emotion in the eyes and to a lesser extent, correctly interpreting social cues” (Keith 1). This study helps prove Keith’s claim by showing that people were better at seeing emotion and interpreting it better than other people, thus showing change in personality.
Another study in 2009 tested adults that measured their personality traits. “We measured the participants so called Big Five personality traits” (Keith 3). The study found that the people who scored higher on the test part of openness read more fiction. Although on the other side they found that people who read more fiction had a relationship between empathy and theory of mind. “ In fact, they were less socially isolated and had more social support than people who were largely nonfiction readers” (Keith 3). This finding shows that people who read fiction books are able to connect with others more, which goes back to the arthurs main theme that fiction books improve social ties.
Scientist believe that fiction books are able to help the reader better understand humans and their actions due to exposure to many scenarios and possibilities that books have. “ Our accumulating findings are providing… hypothesis that reading fiction facilitates the development of social skills because it provides experience thinking about other people” (Keith 3). This also shows how books can change personality by providing people with a better general understanding of society and people.
The arthur then goes on to explain how books change our empathic emotions. Studies claim that when we read fiction books, we put ourselves in the main character's shoes and feel the emotions of that character. “Such investigations support the idea that when we read fiction we put aside our own concerns and plans and adopt those of the story's protagonist”(Keith 4). This shows how books help us explore our emotions and can give us a better understanding of feeling other people's emotions because we get to put ourselves in another person perspective and react as them. Thus would give readers a better social quality of understanding people and their physiology. The last study Keith and other scientist under went was a story to see the changes in personality in people. The study showed how their was a slight change in personality in the reader.
This all relates to the Keiths over all idea that reading fiction books help people connect to society and people in general and can change personality depending on the situations in the book.
530 word count

Diana Lemos

1/28/2019 12:07:42 am

In the article, “In the Minds of Others”, the author, Keith Oatley argues that reading fictional stories is necessary because they help strengthen people’s social ties and change their personalities in a positive manner. Many people might claim that reading is just a way for people to escape the real world and avoid human interaction, but according to the author, reading stories actually prepare readers for social interactions such as “camaraderie, collaboration, [and] even love”. In addition, reading fiction helps people empathize with others and take another person’s point of view into perspective so that they could better understand others.
The author supports his argument by using research and social experimentations to highlight how people’s social skills are improved through reading fiction. For example, the author explains an experiment where 94 adults were tested on their emotional perception and social cognition by viewing photographs and videos of people in a certain emotional state. The study showed that the more fiction a person read, “the better they were at perceiving emotion in the eyes and, to a lesser extent, correctly interpreting social cues…[concluding] the first strong connection between fiction reading and social skills.” This positive correlation between fiction reading and social skills was further supported by another experiment where 303 adults read either nonfiction or fiction, then were tested. The results showed that even briefly reading fiction would improve a person’s social skills because it prepares them “to think about people in the social world” and allows them to view things from another person’s perspective.
The author further supports his claim by using logical reasoning to explain how reading fiction primes a person for social interaction. For example, the author references Shakespeare using his plays to re-create a social environment to show how fiction reflects the real world. In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” readers are prompted to think about the type of person they would want as a “life partner.” In addition, the author uses comparisons to emphasize how reading fiction is practice for social settings. The author compares pilots gaining flying experience by practicing with flight simulators to people acquiring social skills through fiction. This helps show how reading isn’t just a way to escape social environments, but instead to gain experience in socializing.
It’s important to keep in mind that reading isn’t simply a diversion that allows us to avoid socialization like many would think. Fiction produces a change in people that allow them to become more open minded and to view things with different perspectives so that they can better understand people.

Olivia Merza

1/28/2019 10:43:44 pm

In the article, In The Minds of Others, Keith Oakley describes his research on the relationship between reading fictional novels affects one’s social abilities. Through description of extensive research and a deep analysis of results, Oatley comes to the conclusion that reading fictional novels helps readers develop empathy and social skills, including perception of others and personality changes. Keith Oatley, also, backs up his research with research from other sources that are conducting the same exact research to help prove the validity of the research results.

Keith Oatley bases his argument mainly on his own research, but he also provides outside information to help prove his argument. He begins to describe his experiment with the man who inspired all this extensive research into this issue: Raymond A. Mar. Keith Oatley describes him as “an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, [who] decided to challenge the popular conception that people who read a lot of fiction are socially withdrawn bookworms who use novels as an escape from reality” (2). By beginning his evidence with this statement, Oatley is able to give credit where the credit is due and establish ethos through his wide knowledge of this topic and the fact that he is crediting reliable sources.

Oatley also uses his own research to support the research that was already conducted. Oatley describes how himself and a team of 4 other psychologists from Toronto conducted their own experiment consisting of “94 adults, separating fiction from nonfiction” (2). In this experiment, the team tested the participant’s “emotional perception and social cognition,” asking the participants to determine the person’s emotion from a pictures “or just the eyes” and to answer questions about a video clip, tending to do with the people in the video clip’s interactions and / or relationships, respectively. Through this experiment, they determined that there was a “strong connection between fiction reading and social skills” (2). By using this evidence and evidence like it in the article, Oatley is able to support his claim and further prove the connection between fictional reading and social skills. This helps to persuade the reader to believe Keith Oatley because the scientific evidence provided is fully supported, trustworthy, and believable through ethos which was previously established. This makes the reader believe what Oatley is saying is the truth and is how he is able to convince readers that his hypothesis is correct and the claim is not refutable. This is possible because people believe that accurate scientific evidence is the only truth and that it is also not refutable.

This is a very important topic, especially for writers. This is a lot of power writers hold; being able to shape people’s personalities and social skills. It is Crazy! A that power is hard to control and harness. That is why writers must be extremely talented in order to be successful. This also brings out the point that writers must be very social and know all the ins and outs of socializing in order to accurately portray it in the twisted way most fictional novels portray it. THAT is CRAZY!
Word count: 514

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