Literary fiction improves our understanding of other people’s emotions, while genre fiction does not, a study finds, as Research Digest reports.

The psychologist-researchers, David Kidd and Emanuele Castano of the New School for Social Research in New York, tested over 2,000 people with their “author recognition test,” which measures exposure to fiction by asking participants to identify writers they recognize. The list included authors typically identified either as “literary” or “genre” as well as non-authors. The participants then took the “reading the mind in the eyes” test, which asks participants to select one of four emotions that most closely match their impression of a person’s eyes in a photograph.

The study has, predictably, sparked controversy. Val McDermid, a Scottish crime novelist, wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian: “It’s a piece of research that seems to me to have more holes than the plot of Midsomer Murders.” She added:

I did the ‘reading the mind in the eyes’ test (she said, rolling her eyes). I did very well at it. I scored 33 out of 36....

It’s not because I’m totally immersed in literary fiction and don’t waste my brain on genre. There are two reasons. One is that I’ve spent a lifetime in close observation of people so I can write convincing characters.

The second is that I’ve done a lot of quizzes over the years and I recognise the mechanics of a multiple choice that gives you four options, three of which are broadly similar and one of which is different.

There’s also the issue of distinguishing between literary and genre fiction—a topic that James Parker and Rivka Galchen discussed in a February 16 pair of New York Times Bookends pieces.

“Are we really supposed to rely on that crowd of editors and critics variously empowered to decide what is literary and what is commercial?” Galchen wrote. “What I find cheering, though, is that literature does continue to be thought about, and not only by people formally assigned the job of thinking about it.”

It’s not the first time that Kidd and Castano’s research has sparked controversy. As the Research Digest article details, the researchers reached the same conclusion in a different study published in Science using a slightly different approach.

Related reading: A study found that Harry Potter books influence Americans’ attitudes toward Trump, according to the Guardian. University of Pennsylvania Professor Diana Mutz ended her study with this comment: “these findings raise the hope that Harry Potter can help stop the Deathly Donald and make America great again in the eyes of the world, just as Harry did by ridding the wizard world of Voldemort.”

Photo Credit: Martin Argyles / The Guardian.