Exposure to Literary Fiction Is Associated With Lower Psychological Essentialism

Emanuele Castano; Maria Paola Paladino; Olivia G Cadwell; Valentina Cuccio; Pietro Perconti

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.662940

Exposure to Literary Fiction Is Associated With Lower Psychological Essentialism

Front Psychol. 2021 Jun 8:12:662940. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.662940. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Emanuele Castano¹, Maria Paola Paladino¹, Olivia G Cadwell², Valentina Cuccio³, Pietro Perconti³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
² Department of Psychology, The New School, New York City, NY, United States.
³ COSPECS, University of Messina, Messina, Italy.

Abstract

We investigated the impact of exposure to literary and popular fiction on psychological essentialism. Exposure to fiction was measured by using the Author Recognition Test, which allows us to separate exposure to authors of literary and popular fiction. Psychological essentialism was assessed by the discreteness subscale of the psychological essentialism scale in Study 1, and by the three subscales of the same scale (such as discreteness, informativeness, and biological basis) in Study 2 that was pre-registered. Results showed that exposure to literary fiction negatively predicts the three subscales. The results emerged controlling for political ideology, a variable that is commonly associated with psychological essentialism, and level of education.

Keywords: cognitive literary theory; fiction (narrative); linguistic inferences; literary fiction; psychological essentialism; social cognition; theory of mind.