Do books make you laugh? Cry? Fear for a heroine’s safety? Yell at the hero to watch out? If you’ve felt any of those or other emotions while reading fiction, you’re not alone.

Fiction has the ability to transport us to another time and place, to give us insights into what characters feel, think, see, and do. Through fiction, we’re exposed to people who might be very different from us, allowing us insights into other cultures, professions, ages, ethnicities, and life circumstances. We’re there with a woman battling cancer. We’re beside a soldier as he’s trying to save his comrade. We’re at a border crossing into America with an immigrant child. We’re there at the beginning stages of love and at the last goodbye.

These wonderful stories that some of us write and all of us read have meaning beyond entertainment—fiction can create empathy in its readers. In a world running short on kindness and understanding of others, building empathy is essential.

My Reading Life – Sarah Hamaker Share on X

“Fiction and stories do a lot of things for us,” said William Chopik, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, in Discover Magazine. “They expose us to uncomfortable ideas … and provide us with the opportunity to take other peoples’ perspectives in a safe, distanced way. In that way, fiction serves as a playground for exercising empathic skills.”

Studies back this up, including the first one published in 2006, which found a strong correlation between reading fiction and performing better on empathy and social acumen tests. Other studies followed, each with similar findings—that reading fiction makes you more emphatic. For example, researchers at the New School in New York City discovered “that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling,” which is crucial to developing empathy.

When I think back on my own reading life, I realize how much books have influenced both my thinking and my ability to empathize with people not like me. For example, I cried over Jane Eyre’s plight as an orphan even though I had two loving parents. I gained understanding of the suppression of women under the Taliban in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Through fictionalized characters, I’m able to experience life through many different lenses, and I like to think it’s made me a better person.

Christian fiction has a very unique role to play in this. By giving our characters faith, we show readers glimpses into living as a Christian in a world often filled with darkness and despair. I love learning a new truth about the Gospel through Christian fiction, and I hope that readers find new insights into their Christian faith when reading one of my romantic suspense books.

What has reading fiction taught you?

Sarah

Meet Sarah Hamaker

An award-winning author of inspirational romantic suspense, Sarah Hamaker loves writing books “where the hero and heroine fall in love while running for their lives.” She’s an AWSA certified writer and speaker coach, and podcaster of “The Romantic Side of Suspense.” Sarah lives in Virginia with her husband, four children, a first-grader foster child and three cats.