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6 SCIENTIFIC BENEFITS OF READING MORE

Some of the perks that come with picking up a book might surprise you.

By Abigail Fagan |May 21, 2024

Reading comes with some surprising benefits. / David Espejo/Moment/Getty Images

Reading transports us to worlds we would never see, introduces us to people we
would never meet, and instills emotions we might never otherwise feel. It also
provides an array of health benefits. Here are six scientific reasons you should
be picking up more books.


EMPTY HEADING

 1. Reading reduces stress.
 2. Reading (especially reading books) may add years to your life.
 3. Reading improves your language skills and knowledge of the world.
 4. Reading enhances empathy.
 5. Reading boosts creativity and flexibility.
 6. Reading can help you transform as a person.


READING REDUCES STRESS.

In 2009, scientists at the University of Sussex in the UK assessed how different
activities lowered stress by measuring heart rate and muscle tension. Reading a
book or newspaper for just six minutes lowered people’s stress levels by 68
percent—a stronger effect than going for a walk (42 percent), drinking a cup of
tea or coffee (54 percent), or listening to music (61 percent). According to the
authors, the ability to be fully immersed and distracted is what makes reading
the perfect way to relieve stress.




READING (ESPECIALLY READING BOOKS) MAY ADD YEARS TO YOUR LIFE.

Reading books is good for your lifespan. / Kinga Krzeminska/Moment/Getty Images

A daily dose of reading may lengthen your lifespan. A team at Yale University
followed more than 3600 adults over the age of 50 for 12 years. They discovered
that people who reported reading books for 30 minutes a day lived nearly two
years longer than those who read magazines or newspapers. Participants who read
more than 3.5 hours per week were 23 percent less likely to die, and
participants who read less than 3.5 hours per week were 17 percent less likely
to die. “The benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read
them,” the authors wrote.


READING IMPROVES YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD.

In the 1990s, reading pioneer Keith Stanovich and his colleagues conducted
dozens of reading studies to assess the relationship between cognitive skills,
vocabulary, factual knowledge, and exposure to certain fiction and nonfiction
authors. They used the Author Recognition Test (ART), which is a strong
predictor of reading skill. Stanovich tells Mental Floss that the average result
of these studies was that avid readers, as measured by the ART, had around a 50
percent larger vocabulary and 50 percent more fact-based knowledge.



Reading both predicts and contributes to those skills, according to Donald
Bolger, a human development professor at the University of Maryland who
researches how the brain learns to read. “It’s like a snowball effect,” he tells
Mental Floss. “The better you are at reading, the more words you learn. The more
words you learn, the better you are at reading and comprehending—especially
things that would have been outside your domain of expertise.”


READING ENHANCES EMPATHY.

For a 2013 Harvard study, a group of volunteers either read literary fiction
(such as “Corrie” by Alice Munro), popular fiction (such as “Space Jockey” by
Robert Heinlein), nonfiction (such as “How the Potato Changed the World” by
Charles Mann), or nothing. Across five experiments, those who read literary
fiction performed better on tasks like predicting how characters would act and
identifying the emotion encoded in facial expressions. These speak to the
ability to understand others’ mental states, which scientists call Theory of
Mind.



“If we engage with characters who are nuanced, unpredictable, and difficult to
understand, then I think we’re more likely to approach people in the real world
with an interest and humility necessary for dealing with complex individuals,”
study lead author David Kidd, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, tells Mental Floss.


READING BOOSTS CREATIVITY AND FLEXIBILITY.

Reading can make you more creative. / Fotografía de eLuVe/Moment/Getty Images

“In our real lives, we often feel like we have to make a decision, and therefore
we close our mind to information that could eventually help us,” says Maja
Djikic, a psychologist at the University of Toronto. “When we read fiction, we
practice keeping our minds open because we can afford uncertainty.”



Djikic came to that conclusion after she conducted a study in which 100 people
were assigned to read a fictional story or a nonfiction essay. The participants
then completed questionnaires intended to assess their level of cognitive
closure, which is the need to reach a conclusion quickly and avoid ambiguity in
the decision-making process. The fiction readers emerged as more flexible and
creative than the essay readers—and the effect was strongest for people who read
on a regular basis.


READING CAN HELP YOU TRANSFORM AS A PERSON.

It’s not often that we can identify moments when our personality changes and
evolves, but reading fiction may help us do just that. The same University of
Toronto research team asked 166 people to fill out questionnaires regarding
their emotions and key personality traits, based on the widely used Big Five
Inventory, which measures extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness,
emotional stability/neuroticism, and openness. Then half of the group read Anton
Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Toy Dog,” about a man who travels to a
resort and has an affair with a married woman. The other half of the group read
a similar nonfiction version presented as a report from divorce court.
Afterwards, everyone answered the same personality questions they’d answered
previously—and many of the fiction readers’ responses had significantly changed.
They saw themselves differently after reading about others’ fictional
experience. The nonfiction readers didn’t undergo this shift in self-reflection.



“As you identify with another person, a protagonist in the story, you enter into
a piece of life that you wouldn’t otherwise have known. You have emotions or
circumstances that you wouldn’t have otherwise understood,” Keith Oatley, a
University of Toronto psychologist and one of the study’s authors, tells Mental
Floss. Imagining new experiences creates a space in which readers can grow and
change.

Discover More Articles About Books and Reading:

> manual

A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2024.




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