Books are good for your brain. But fiction has a surprising added benefit
Reading fiction may strengthen the social skills we use to understand and connect with others.
Reading in general — newspapers, magazines, nonfiction books — has been linked to slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults and even longer lives.
But reading fiction may have unique benefits. For example, the amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition — our ability to think about and interact with other people — and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place.
Why? Fiction forces you to imagine a story’s world and characters. It makes you grapple with different perspectives, mentally inhabiting distinct points of view, according to Nick Buttrick, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
This can help us find “better insight into our own experiences, insight into the experiences of others who are very different from us,” said Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, who recently wrote a review on the benefits of reading narrative fiction. “It just tends to evoke a form of reflection and contemplation, which can only be good for us.”
Why reading is actually social
Social health is important for overall health. And it turns out that reading, though often thought of as a solitary activity, can boost our social abilities.
To understand why, it helps to look at how reading shapes us as we grow.
Between ages 4 and 6, children develop a theory of mind — the ability to understand that others have different beliefs, perspectives and feelings. Studies find that children exposed to more storybooks are further along this developmental milestone than those exposed to fewer ones, Mar said.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 21 studies found that children who read more storybooks had more empathy. And there is evidence that empathy and reading go both ways. Better reading comprehension was a predictor of empathy later in life, while empathy also was a predictor of better reading ability, according to a 2024 study of more than 900 children. And adolescents who read more for fun became more social adults, a 2023 study found.
Reading fiction “presents to us a complex cognitive and emotional simulation of the social world,” which is useful in the real world, Mar said.
The power of storytelling
These benefits may be due, in part, to the power of storytelling.
Neuroimaging studies find that brain networks involved in understanding stories overlap with brain networks needed for theory of mind. This suggests that “while engaging with stories, we’re also pulling online the same kinds of brain networks that we use to understand other people,” said Mar, who wrote a review about these studies.
Other forms of storytelling, such as television and movies, may provide similar benefits, but “one of the things that you do when you read is you have to construct the world” in your head, Buttrick said. “The world is not given to you. You have to do the work of imagining.”
This extra work may amplify the benefits of engaging in a story.
Spending time with our favorite story characters may also help us feel connected. “Even if our friends aren’t around and can’t get together, we can always open up a book,” Mar said.
Reading can be a social activity, too, one that reinforces the joys and benefits of reading. Book clubs, shared reading organizations and social media communities like BookTokcan connect us with other readers and add yet another layer to building our social cognitive abilities.
Talking to others about the books you read means you’re not only imagining the characters in a story, but also gaining an understanding of how other people respond to those characters, Buttrick said.
Exposure to difference
Beyond helping our social cognition, reading fiction can expand our world and our understanding of its complexities. Good authors are master observers of the human condition and can expose us to experiences outside our comfort zone.
“Reading is an encounter with difference, with a different kind of mind, a different place, a different approach to the world,” Buttrick said. “And so a lot of the places where I think reading is most interesting are in places where it smashes this up with difference as strongly as it can.”
In a 2022 study of more than 5,000 people published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Buttrick and his colleagues found that those who grew up reading more literary fiction were more likely to become adults with more complex worldviews — with more nuance, more psychological richness and intellectual humility.
“I think if we want to live in a world in which everyone’s treated as something like an individual, knowing that the world is complex, especially socially complex, is probably really good,” he said.
But there are inherent difficulties with studying the effects of reading because “reading is a part of a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “And when people have more time, more space to read, more inclination to read, they’re not doing that at random.”
Benefits probably take time to accrue, and socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of reading behavior and ability, though a 2025 study of more than 14,000 students found that leisure reading had the largest benefits for children whose parents had less education.
“Successful art resonates with a great number of people because it captures something about being human that appeals to us and maybe that we don’t fully understand,” Mar said.
How to read more
Start slow. Mar recommends getting off your phonebefore going to bed and spending that time reading instead. “Maybe you have to build up to an hour,” he said. “But you can start with 15 minutes and then work to 30 minutes, then 45 in an hour before you go to sleep. It’s probably a good thing.”
Cultivate a habit. Consistency is key. “I don’t think that any one book will change a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “I think it’s the accretion of lots of books, you know, reading again and again and again, that really has an effect on how people think about the world more broadly.”
Dive into the vast diversity of reading. Different forms of reading — short stories, graphic novels and fan fiction, for example — also count. Given his busy work schedule and reading of academic journals, Mar prefers to read short stories. “It’s hard for me to commit to a book,” said Mar, who has most recently read the works of Irish writer Claire Keegan.
(Buttrick is currently reading Spencer Ackerman’s “Reign of Terror” and gearing up to read William Vollmann’s 3,000-plus-page novel, “A Table for Fortune.” And I’ve been reading through my collection of Terry Pratchett, who is a hilarious satirical writer, including “Small Gods,” which tackles religion, and “The Truth,” which is about journalism.)
Audiobooks can be beneficial, too. Buttrick said audiobooks still count as reading. In fact, the format may make certain books easier to grasp. Listening to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” not only makes it easier to understand and funnier, but also makes “you realize how much of it is just a song,” Buttrick said.
Remember that reading should be enjoyable. “I don’t think of reading as a monastic experience that you have to do alone at night in order to grow as a person,” Buttrick said. Lean into what you enjoy.
Make it social. Book clubs are excellent and flourishing. It’s nice to have an accountability partner and others with whom to share perspectives, Buttrick said.
Read unselfconsciously. Reading is for enjoyment. “A lot of times people seem embarrassed about the things that they’ve been reading,” Mar said. But “there’s nothing to be embarrassed about whatever you’re reading.”
Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.
