Empathy Through Fiction

Do Stories Change Souls?

by Annie Beth Donahue

Can a story change a soul?

A long time ago, when I wore a different occupational hat, I held music therapy sessions for children with special healthcare needs. These sessions often included children on the autism spectrum. And as their therapist, I was trained to create sessions that not only addressed their goals, but also pulled in elements from the other sessions they were having or from therapies their parents were working on in the home. I wanted to serve the best way I knew how and one way to do this was to systematically review all the interdisciplinary documentation on what makes for good therapy.

That is where I first learned about social stories.

Sidebar: Please note that I’m leaving the term social stories uncapitalized. This is so I can throw around the term unofficially in this article. The capitalized kind of Social Stories are a trademarked therapeutic tool. The uncapitalized kind are any kind of narrative that a parent or therapist might create to address their child’s social learning needs through story.

However, even unofficial social stories often fit the ten criteria that make up an “official” social story. (See, I still didn’t capitalize that. No trademark violations here!)

At the risk of boring everyone, I want to share the original ten criteria of the official trademarked “Social Stories.” Yes, these are rules for creating a therapeutic tool. But think about what else they might remind you of.

1. The Goal.  A Social Story meaningfully shares social information with a patient and reassuring quality, and at least 50% of all Social Stories applaud achievements.

2. A Social Story has an introduction that clearly identifies the topic, a body that adds detail, and a conclusion that reinforces and summarizes the information.

3. A Social Story answers ‘wh’ questions.

4. A Social Story is written from a first or third person perspective.

5. A Social Story uses positive language.

6. A Social Story always contains descriptive sentences, with an option to include any one or more of the five remaining sentence types (perspective, cooperative, directive, affirmative, and/or control sentences).

7. A Social Story describes more than directs, following the Social Story formula.

8. A Social Story has a format that is tailored to the abilities and interests of its audience, and is usually literally accurate. (Considerations include story length; organization and sentence structure; repetition, rhythm, and rhyme; modifications in vocabulary and literal accuracy including careful selection of verbs and alternative vocabulary; and possible use of metaphors or analogies if they are understood by the audience.)

9. A Social Story may contain individually tailored illustrations that enhance the meaning of the text.

10. A Social Story title meets all applicable Social Story criteria. 

Sounds kind of like a writing assignment straight from a class on creating fiction, doesn’t it?

The story has a logical progression, it’s written in third or first person (with first person often preferred), it contains descriptive sentences, it has a format that is tailored to the interests of its audience, and it describes more than directs. (Show, don’t tell, anyone?)

The idea behind social stories is that the child will identify with the character in the story, empathize with other points of view or learn facts about life, and hopefully pick up “scripts” or language they can use when in a similar situation in real life. This technique has been used since at least the ’90s.

The success of social stories spurred research into the realm of fiction. If these short social stories worked for children who were neurodivergent, what type of effect might fiction, in general, have on the general population? 

Probably one of the best studies on the subject was How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation. It tried to address some of the questions raised by previous studies. 

For example, researchers wondered whether or not reading fiction made people more empathetic or whether empathetic people were more likely to read fiction. Good question. Maybe the kids who were more receptive to social stories in the first place were already more likely to be empathetic. Or maybe the empathetic high school sophomore who spent math class sneaking looks at the novel on their lap was just inherently a dreamy, emotional person who would rather read than do Algebra. 

This study in 2013 was better controlled, and it ended up revealing three important things:

It is not the activity of reading itself that transforms the self, but the emotional involvement in a narrative.

So, just reading any old thing will not make you more empathetic. For example, if you’re an avid news reader, that might be great for your vocabulary and ability to discuss current events at parties. Still, it won’t necessarily make you more empathetic. In fact, another finding from the study seemed to imply the opposite could be true.

Although both types of narratives [fiction and nonfiction] may elicit strong emotions, and people may become engaged in reading both types of narratives, the outcomes may be opposite to each other. While transportation into fiction may cause people to sympathize with other people, through felt emotions, high involvement and sympathy for people in nonfiction stories may create felt obligations to do something while not possible, which consequently leads to lower empathy.

In other words, reading about real trials and tribulations, especially current ones, might actually make someone less empathetic. Because we can so easily feel discouraged over problems in the real world that we have no direct control over, we are quicker to burn out on empathy or disengage from the story.

Finally, the current study has shown that the effects do not present themselves immediately, but that the effects are guided by an absolute sleeper effect. Theoretically, fictional narratives are more likely to influence behavior over the course of a week rather than directly after the narrative experience, because the process of transformation of an individual needs time to unfold. For instance, people think back and mentally relive the story they have read. The effects of fictional narrative experience may flourish under conditions of an incubation period, in which the changes in empathy become internalized and part of the self-concept.

So daydreaming and re-reading, and mulling over a good book actually drive the lessons deeper into our hearts.

We often say that books should be windows or mirrors. They are windows when they show us the lives of others, and they are mirrors when they reflect our own lives back to us.

While not fiction, the embodiment of Jesus Christ in the gospel narrative is, of course, a narrative. And as a narrative it serves as one the greatest examples of how souls can be impacted by story. As an embodied human, Jesus mirrored for us our own human experience through story. After all, he literally used stories in his parables. But as the God-Man, Jesus provides a window to his eternal perspective of what story is fundamentally for. Deeper identification and abiding in these “stories” changes our heart of stone to a heart of flesh. And the more we imprint the words on our hearts - just as a child learning from a social story—the more likely we are to adopt a different "script" and to see the world with different eyes.

So, yes, a story can change a soul.

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“The fiction that we read affects our behavior toward our fellow man, affects our patterns of ourselves.”
T.S. Eliot, “Religion and Literature”