A study performed in 2006 shows that readers of fiction tend to have higher “emotional intelligence.” Reading fiction improves emotional awareness, empathy, and, more broadly, social skills. In a recent blog post by Anne Kremer for the Harvard Business Review, this study was brought up in order to draw conclusions about success in the workplace and in society attributed to stronger “theory of mind,” which is defined by a person’s ability to read and react to another person’s perspective. In a recent blog post for the Harvard Business Review, Anne Kremer referred to this study in order to draw conclusions about success in the workplace and in society based on a stronger “theory of mind,” which is defined by a person’s ability to readand react to another person’s perspective.

The study, done by Keith Oatley, a cognitive psychologist, and Raymond Mar of York University, aimed to show that reading fiction improved the subject’s social skillfulness. Precisely, reading activates and develops neuronal pathways in the brain that noticeably assists the reader in acquiring a better understanding of human expression.

“It’s when we read fiction that we have the time and opportunity to think deeply about the feelings of others,” says Kremer, “really imagining the shape and flavor of alternate worlds of experience.”

She adds that experiencing a different set of emotions by a well-developed character in a novel make her more adept at recognizing them in a real person. Kremer calls this “nourishing empathy.”

Read the full post, which goes further into explaining the usefulness of being an avid consumer of fiction: http://blogs.hbr.org/...the_business_case_for_reading.../.