College Teaching

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How Does Literature Affect Empathy in Students?

Christine R. Junker & Stephen J. Jacquemin

To cite this article: Christine R. Junker & Stephen J. Jacquemin (2017) How Does Literature Affect
Empathy in Students?, College Teaching, 65:2, 79-87, DOI: 10.1080/87567555.2016.1255583

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COLLEGE TEACHING
2017, VOL. 65, NO. 2, 79–87
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2016.1255583

How Does Literature Affect Empathy in Students?

Christine R. Junker and Stephen J. Jacquemin
Wright State University—Lake Campus

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Scholars have suggested that reading literature can foster empathy. However, learning empathy Literature pedagogy;
through literature in the classroom is understudied. The primary objective of this study was to diversity; empathy
assess whether affective and cognitive empathy, as demonstrated in student writing, relates to pedagogy; multivariate
textual attributes, the style of writing prompt, student writing ability, and whether it changes over analysis
time. Students in a college literature classroom were asked to assess texts according to a series of
attributes related to engagement and textual difficulty, followed by a series of analytical and
creative writing prompts. These responses were scored on a comparative scale according to metrics
of empathy and compared with textual attributes, strength of writing, and time using a general
linear model. Textual difficulty was identified as the greatest predictor of empathy (inverse
relationship) followed by assignment grade (positive relationship). These results indicate that
textual attributes, strength of writing ability, and style of writing response play a central role in
explaining empathetic responses in students. The furthest-reaching implications of this study may,
however, rest in the findings that empathy didn’t change over the short time period and that
textual accessibility may trump all other aspects in facilitating empathetic responses.

Introduction
The relationship between narrative, reading, and empa-
thy has become the subject of much debate and study
over the past decade as research has begun to elicit
whether empathy can be taught or instilled at an individ-
ual level or whether it is intrinsic and therefore difficult
to change. Research on teaching empathy within the
higher education classroom setting has been limited
mostly to professional fields, such as medicine or social
work. Overall, scholars have become increasingly
invested in researching the most effective ways to both
teach and assess empathy, since research has shown that
professional efficacy in a variety of disciplines (e.g. medi-
cine, social work, etc.) increases with an individual’s abil-
ity to empathize (Stepien and Baernstein 2006, 528;
Gerdes et al. 2010, 2336; Batt-Rawden et al. 2013, 1174)
with others (e.g. a patient, client, etc.). Despite this recent
emphasis on researching and teaching empathy, how-
ever, little research has been done in higher education
classroom environments beyond professional schools,
particularly those in non-professional general education
areas.
Much of the existing research to build upon to poten-
tially address this deficiency, however, faces similar chal-
lenges: unclear or divergent definitions of empathy as
well as unreliable or inconsistent means of measuring
empathy (Batt-Rawden 2013, 1175; Gerdes et al. 2010,
2337). Thus, prior to any study or assessment of empa-
thy, the meaning and methods to define empathy should
be outlined, since “empathy” can often be more of an
umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of traits,
behaviors, and/or reactions to a particular stimulus and
the assessment techniques can include anything which
describes a mental, emotional, or behavioral process in
response to a stimulus (e.g. the Reading the Mind in the
Eyes Test, personality scales, textual analysis, etc.; Kidd
& Castano 2013, Djikic et.al. 2013, Mar et.al. 2009; Bal &
Veltkamp 2013; Batson et. al. 2002; Oatley 1999). For the
purposes of this research, and in keeping with much of
the research on empathy, we define the term “empathy”
as a response that combines affective (for instance, the
emotional reaction one may have toward or with a per-
son or character) and cognitive dimensions (for example,
the mental processes of considering another’s perspective
or imagining oneself in the situation of the person and/or
character). Further, we use a combination of qualitative
and quantitative textual analysis of both literature and
written responses to assess empathy. Importantly, this
approach distinguishes empathy from an intrinsic
trait - to echo Leslie Jamison’s words, “Empathy isn’t

CONTACT Stephen J. Jacquemin stephen.jacquemin@wright.edu Wright State University - Lake Campus, 7600 Lake Campus Drive, 230J Dwyer, Celina,
OH 45822, USA.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
80 C. R. JUNKER AND S. J. JACQUEMIN
just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of
synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we
make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves” (2014, Kin-
dle Location 430)—as well as provides a clear and repeat-
able assessment approach. Thus, under this model,
empathy is something that can be learned and practiced
as well as assessed using written artifacts (Stepien and
Baernstein 2006, 528; Batt-Rawden et al. 2013, 1174;
1172).
The objective of this study was to test whether levels
of cognitive and affective empathy as evidenced in stu-
dent writing relates to textual attributes of literature
assigned in class, a particular style or genre of writing
response, an individual student’s writing ability, and
whether it can change over a semester with practice.
While this research deals with specific texts from a gen-
eral literature course, given the broad range of circum-
stances in which literature could be utilized to
potentially affect an individual’s empathetic responses,
makes these results potentially applicable over a wide
range of subject areas. Furthermore, this study may allow
researchers to understand why or why not a certain situ-
ation (in this case, textual) may elicit a particular empa-
thetic response. The implications of this could provide a
framework for gauging what sorts of general stimuli
affect students and professionals.
There is a precedent for linking the reading of litera-
ture with affective and cognitive empathy that has been
supported by numerous experimental studies. For
example, variation in empathy has been shown to
strongly depend on certain textual attributes (e.g. non-
fiction vs. fiction, narrative point of view), including
those attributes that specifically deal with the reader’s
perception of the text (e.g. getting pulled into a story,
feeling clear or unclear as to narrative meaning, etc.).
Generally, reading fiction seems to generate more
empathy than reading nonfiction texts, even if those
nonfiction texts are narrative in style (Kidd and Castano
2013, 380; Bal and Veltkamp 2013, 5; Koopman and
Hakemulder 2015, 80; Djikic, Oatley, and Moldoveanu
2009, 40). Another crucial factor that influences reader
empathy is the reader’s ability to identify with charac-
ters (Keen 2007, 68), so textual attributes that facilitate
identification, such as the use of first-person narration,
are likely to play a role in fostering empathy (Oatley
1999, 445). More specifically, Keen discovered that
readers are more likely to identify with characters who
are experiencing negative affective situations and that
watching characters experience hardship makes readers
especially likely to be able to identify across categories
of difference (2007, 72). However, there is less agree-
ment about the role of textual “difficulty” and empathy
as Keen, for example, contends that too much literary
difficulty results in too much “defamiliarization” and
inhibits, not increases, empathy (2007, 88). Similarly,
Bal and Veltkamp found that readers who are not
“emotionally transported” while they’re reading experi-
ence decreased levels of empathy (2013, 5). Though Bal
and Veltkamp’s study doesn’t directly address difficulty,
it is probable that difficulty would interfere with textual
absorption, if for no other reason than the fact that tex-
tual difficulty pulls the reader out of the story through
the reminder that one is reading, not experiencing.
Kidd and Castano, on the other hand, found that liter-
ary, as opposed to popular, texts led to a larger increase
in empathy (2013), perhaps because literary texts offer
more ambiguity and complexity, and thus engage read-
ers in the kind of interpretative work that fosters a
greater degree of empathy (Koopman and Hakemulder
2015, 88).
In addition to the variety of textual attributes or kind
of text being read, research has also begun to elicit
whether or not the manner in which one responds to a
text relates to variation in empathy. For example, Koop-
man and Hakemulder argue that fictional narratives
prompt reflection, which they define as “thoughts and
insights on oneself, often in relation to others, and/or
society” and that this reflection may encourage “empathy
to emerge for the fullest extent” (2015, 101). Though
their research does not specifically test the effects of
reflective writing, it follows that writing reflectively about
literary texts could encourage the emergence of empathy,
provided that the writing prompted readers to link the
texts to themselves and to interrogate the relationship
between themselves and the characters and situations in
the texts they’re reading. In addition, Oatley argues for
the importance of “role-taking” while reading in order to
facilitate empathy (1999, 445), which suggests that writ-
ing in which students are asked to take on the perspec-
tive of the character may correspond with an increase in
empathy. Writing, on the other hand, that does not
involve role-taking and/or personal reflection may not
have an effect, or may negatively impact, reader/student
empathy.
Finally, whether empathy, in relation to reading,
changes over the course of time, short or long term, is
relevant to understanding the potential lasting influences
of reading and what can drive these patterns. In the short
term, Djikic, Oatley, and Moldoveanu (2013, 40) as well
as Kidd and Castano (2013), found that cognitive empa-
thy increases after reading short stories or excerpts.
These studies, however, measured empathy and reading
within a lab setting. Longer term studies, such as Mar,
Oatley, and Peterson’s examination of empathy, reading
fiction, and personality traits, track how a lifetime of
reading affects overall empathy levels, independent of
 COLLEGE TEACHING 81

personality, and conclude that the more a person reads, Table 1. Texts with mean student scores (standard error in paren-
the more empathetic that person is likely to be, even theses) arranged by specific empathy metrics.
when traits like gender, age, language fluency, and per- Cultural Multiple
Text Openness Frameworks Perspectives Affective
sonality traits are controlled for (2009, 420-1). This
empirical research is consistent with the philosophical American Salvage 3.1 (0.18) 2.5 (0.22) 2.8 (0.25) 2.9 (0.23)
writings of cultural theorists who make strong claims for Beloved 2.7 (0.24) 2.4 (0.24) 2.5 (0.24) 2.4 (0.20)
Billy Lynn 2.5 (0.28) 2.9 (0.32) 2.6 (0.31) 3.0 (0.14)
the value of reading novels. For example, Martha Nuss- Constellation 2.9 (0.24) 2.5 (0.22) 2.8 (0.24) 2.5 (0.22)
baum (1995, 92) argues that reading realist novels instills Curious Incident 2.6 (0.20) 2.3 (0.14) 2.5 (0.21) 2.7 (0.20)
Glass Castle 2.5 (0.34) 2.5 (0.34) 2.5 (0.31) 2.4 (0.25)
“habits of mind that lead toward social equality” largely Henrietta Lacks 3.1 (0.15) 2.9 (0.20) 3.0 (0.17) 2.8 (0.18)
because novels teach us to see humans, including indi- Part-Time Indian 3.0 (0.17) 3.0 (0.20) 3.0 (0.15) 2.9 (0.20)
Kindred 3.5 (0.17) 3.6 (0.22) 3.6 (0.16) 2.9 (0.16)
viduals very different from ourselves, as distinct beings Olive Kitteridge 2.7 (0.23) 2.7 (0.20) 2.8 (0.22) 2.9 (0.19)
with their own desires, identities, and complex life histo- Paradise 2.7 (0.21) 2.5 (0.22) 2.3 (0.30) 2.4 (0.27)
Poisonwood Bible 3.0 (0.21) 2.6 (0.27) 3.0 (0.26) 2.8 (0.20)
ries. Taken together, these studies make a compelling
case for the idea that reading literature increases habits Note. Full text and author information is included in the methods section.
of mind consistent with empathy, both short term and
long term. However, classroom scale research over the frameworks that affected characters’ behaviors, affective
course of an entire semester has not been undertaken. responses to the texts, and literary concepts. A subset of
This study seeks to fill in this gap by assessing a series the 12 total texts used also included a creative writing
of four related questions and hypotheses relating to prompt (two in each semester), for which students were
empathy, reading, and writing in the higher-education asked to rewrite a scene from one of the novels from a
classroom: (1) Is there a relationship between empathy different narrative perspective. All writing assignments
and text? (2) Does the type of writing assignment that stu- were given an overall grade, independent of empathy,
dents complete in response to a text coincide with their that addressed literary analysis and content, paper struc-
level of empathy? (3) Is empathy related to writing ability? ture, formatting, and writing style. Following this, writ-
and (4) Does empathy increase over time in a classroom ing assignments were further assessed for empathy using
setting? a 4 point scale (table 1), independent of assignment
grade, according to the following measures of cognitive
and affective empathy: “openness,” (student’s ability to
Methods
read about diverse cultural experiences and people with-
To assess potential relationships between empathy and out leaping to premature judgments), “cultural frame-
text, texts were chosen in this study for their representa- works” (student’s ability to identify and understand the
tion of diverse perspectives, characters, and cultural complexity and implications of a character’s cultural
frameworks (table 1). Study participants were chosen as background and frameworks), “multiple perspectives”
part of two sophomore-level English courses. To increase (the student’s imaginative ability to view a situation from
the number of texts utilized in the study, texts varied a multiplicity of viewpoints), and “affective” (the stu-
between classes; however, all participants were engaged dent’s identification of emotional nuance and expression
in identical course structure (e.g. assignments, schedule, of shared emotional experiences or traits) (table 1). To
etc.). A total of six unique texts were used in each semes- establish textual attributes pertaining to each text and
ter (including: Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage, overall difficulty, students rated each text on a 5-point
Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s scale according to 13 textual attributes that addressed
Long Halftime Walk, Anthony Marra’s A Constellation how engrossed students were in the story, whether stu-
of Vital Phenomena, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Inci- dents found the narrative confusing or easy to follow,
dent of the Dog in the Night-Time, Jeanette Walls’ The and how convincing each narrative was relative to story
Glass Castle, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Hen- and overall theme (table 2) as well as how difficult overall
rietta Lacks, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary they found the text (Buselle and Bilandzic 2009). All use
of a Part-Time Indian, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Eliza- of student artifacts was undertaken in accordance with
beth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, Toni Morrison’s Paradise, approved protocols outlined through the university IRB
and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. After committee (#5391 Service Learning and Multicultural
reading and discussing each text, students completed Competency in the Literature Classroom).
standard analytical writing assignments using compara- To assess potential linkages between student empathy
ble prompts across texts. Each analytical prompt was and textual attributes, a principal components analysis
specifically designed to build students’ skills at discerning (PCA) was used to condense variation in the student
and analyzing: multiple perspectives, cultural scored textual attribute matrix to facilitate direct
 82
C. R. JUNKER AND S. J. JACQUEMIN

Table 2. Texts with mean student scores (standard error in parentheses) arranged by textual attributes. (attributes adapted from “measuring narrative engagement” Busselle and Bilandzic
2009).
Forgot Attn on Mind Easily followed Hard time Found story Hard time
Lost track Text problems surroundings Into world Not pulled Wanted to wandered actions recognizing logical and Found story making sense
Text of time dragged while reading instead of novel of story into story know ending while reading of story thread of story convincing unclear of story

American Salvage 2.4 (0.27) 3.2 (0.29) 2.8 (0.33) 3.2 (0.29) 2.8 (0.25) 3.4 (0.27) 3.2 (0.29) 3.1 (0.31) 3.3 (0.26) 2.8 (0.29) 2.9 (0.23) 3.2 (0.36) 3.1 (0.28)
Beloved 2.4 (0.37) 3.4 (0.27) 2.3 (0.25) 3.4 (0.24) 2.4 (0.29) 3.6 (0.22) 2.8 (0.28) 3.6 (0.22) 2.4 (0.22) 3.3 (0.25) 2.9 (0.18) 3.9 (0.14) 3.8 (0.25)
Billy Lynn 3.0 (0.27) 2.9 (0.29) 2.6 (0.20) 3.0 (0.30) 3.0 (0.30) 2.9 (0.32) 3.7 (0.27) 2.9 (0.29) 3.4 (0.24) 2.5 (0.21) 3.7 (0.20) 3.2 (0.30) 2.9 (0.21)
Constellation 2.7 (0.35) 3.3 (0.30) 2.8 (0.33) 3.3 (0.35) 2.9 (0.35) 3.2 (0.38) 3.4 (0.36) 3.3 (0.32) 3.1 (0.27) 3.3 (0.28) 3.5 (0.27) 3.9 (0.19) 3.8 (0.24)
Curious Incident 3.5 (0.21) 2.8 (0.35) 2.8 (.23) 2.6 (0.28) 3.4 (0.20) 3.0 (0.30) 3.8 (0.33) 3.1 (0.25) 3.4 (0.24) 2.4 (0.15) 3.6 (0.15) 3.2 (0.30) 3.2 (0.23)
Glass Castle 3.8 (0.26) 2.4 (0.24) 3.5 (0.31) 2.5 (0.25) 3.5 (0.21) 1.9 (0.21) 4.5 (0.16) 2.4 (0.28) 3.9 (0.21) 2.2 (0.26) 4.0 (0.27) 2.5 (0.28) 2.3 (0.24)
Henrietta Lacks 2.2 (0.21) 3.8 (0.25) 2.2 (0.26) 3.6 (0.23) 2.1 (0.25) 3.8 (0.27) 2.9 (0.31) 3.8 (0.19) 3.3 (0.25) 2.7 (0.29) 3.7 (0.21) 2.5 (0.25) 2.9 (0.30)
Part-Time Indian 4.3 (0.17) 1.7 (0.13) 3.7 (0.24) 2.1 (0.15) 4.2 (0.18) 1.8 (0.18) 4.3 (0.17) 2.2 (0.18) 4.7 (0.10) 1.6 (0.18) 4.1 (0.19) 2.0 (0.20) 1.8 (0.20)
Kindred 3.3 (0.20) 2.8 (0.30) 3.1 (0.24) 2.7 (0.23) 3.6 (0.26) 2.5 (0.23) 4.0 (0.20) 2.8 (0.25) 4.0 (0.26) 2.1 (0.23) 3.7 (0.24) 2.6 (0.25) 2.4 (0.27)
Olive Kitteridge 2.4 (0.25) 3.4 (0.26) 2.4 (0.24) 3.2 (0.29) 2.3 (0.21) 3.3 (0.27) 2.9 (0.28) 3.6 (0.22) 2.9 (0.27) 3.2 (0.25) 3.4 (0.24) 3.3 (0.24) 3.3 (0.25)
Paradise 3.6 (0.45) 3.0 (0.26) 2.7 (0.26) 2.9 (0.28) 3.1 (0.35) 2.3 (0.34) 4.2 (0.25) 3.0 (0.33) 3.1 (0.46) 2.5 (0.31) 3.2 (0.25) 3.7 (0.34) 3.4 (0.34)
Poisonwood Bible 3.4 (0.27) 3.1 (0.31) 2.8 (0.29) 3.3 (0.34) 3.0 (0.33) 3.0 (0.30) 3.9 (0.28) 3.0 (0.37) 3.2 (0.39) 2.6 (0.34) 3.6 (0.27) 3.4 (0.31) 3.4 (0.27)

comparisons with individual empathy metrics. PCA is an
unconstrained ordination technique that indirectly
extracts gradients between variables in a given dataset.
The PCA was run in the software PC-ORD using default
analysis settings (version 6.19, MjM Software, USA).
Axes were interpreted following the broken stick model
(Jackson 1993). To test for relatedness with empathy, the
resulting PCA axes were correlated (using Pearson’s
method) with each of the four measured empathy met-
rics. To assess whether empathy scores changed with
time, writing ability, or textual difficulty, the four empa-
thy metrics were regressed against time, textual difficulty,
and assignment grade using a linear mixed-effects model
fitted with a repeated-measures approach to account for
non-independence between multiple data points for each
student (i.e. multiple writing artifacts submitted by the
same student over a given semester). Lastly, a paired t-
test was used to compare relative scores between each of
the four empathy metrics between analytical and creative
writing style prompts by students. All models were
implemented in the R statistical environment (R Core
Team 2016) using the stats package.
Results
The study included 252 responses from 42 students covering
writing prompts from 12 novels over 2 semesters. Student
artifacts collected included surveys of each text that assessed
their emotional transportation while reading, a single ana-
lytical writing assignment paired with each text that assessed
their ability to critically think about each text, and for four of
Figure 1. PCA scatterplot of axes 1 and 2 with strongest loading variables labeled on axes and significant correlations with empathy
metrics indicated.
COLLEGE TEACHING 83
the texts, a creative writing assignment that asked the stu-
dents to take on the perspective of someone in the story
while they navigated a particular scene in the novel.
PCA of the textual attributes explained 71% of the
variation in responses along 2 significant axes describing
each text. The first axis (eigenvalue 7.5) explained 58%
of the variation in textual attributes and primarily sepa-
rated texts on the basis of a given reader’s feelings per-
taining to getting absorbed into the text (positive loading
values) compared with negatively loading perceptions
that the text was tedious or uninteresting (figure 1). The
second axis (eigenvalue 1.7) explained 13% of the varia-
tion in textual attributes, separating texts on perceptions
of how easy it was to follow events and narrative (posi-
tive loading values) compared with negatively loading
perceptions that it was difficult to understand the text’s
narrative or order of events (figure 1). Post hoc correla-
tions with individual empathy metrics identified signifi-
cant positive relationships along PCA1, indicating that
higher levels of openness (r D 0.16; p D 0.05), multiple
perspective awareness (r D 0.17; p D 0.03), cultural
framework awareness (r D 0.20; p D 0.01), and affective
mental attitude (r D 0.19; p D 0.01) coincided with
absorption into the textual world and feelings of disasso-
ciation from reality (PCA1). No significant correlations
between individual empathy metrics were identified
along PCA2. Similar directionality and strength of indi-
vidual empathy metrics with the first axis suggested a
degree of multicollinearity might have been occurring,
which was tested for and confirmed post hoc by calculat-
ing variance inflation statistics for the individual
84 C. R. JUNKER AND S. J. JACQUEMIN

Table 3. Results of general linear model indicating relationship engaged in a more creative writing style (i.e. rewriting a
between average empathy score and time, textual difficulty, portion of the text) tend to exhibit higher degrees of
grade, and term interactions.
empathy than students analyzing a particular theme or
Variable Estimate SE df t P textual event.
Time ¡0.18 0.09 193 ¡1.91 0.06
Text difficulty ¡0.45 0.22 193 ¡1.99 0.05
Grade 0.14 0.03 193 4.7 <0.001 Discussion
Time x Text difficulty 0.04 0.03 193 1.58 0.12
The findings of this study build upon previous research
on the relationship between reading and empathy and
empathy variables (>2.5; Lin 2011) and observing inter- represent an important contribution to understanding
correlations between variables (all above r D 0.65). Given what particular facets of reading can influence empathy,
the similarity of these variables in direction, theoretical ultimately helping to guide pedagogical methods being
meaning, and measurement unit scale, a single compos- used inside the higher education classroom. This study
ite of all four metrics was calculated and rerun with simi- shows that the relationship between reading, writing,
lar positive results along PCA1 (r D 0.19; p D 0.01) and and empathy is nuanced; that careful attention must be
PCA2 (r D 0.03; p D 0.69). paid to selecting texts, the style of writing or response
Initial results of the linear model indicated strong pos- prompts, students’ writing ability; and that, moreover,
itive covariation between individual empathy metrics as reading alone may not be enough to substantively change
well as significant covariation between textual difficulty student’s levels of empathy over the course of a 15-week
and time (e.g. harder texts assigned later in the semester). semester. Our findings also suggest that key objectives in
To reduce model complexity and account for issues with many literature classes may conflict with the objective of
multicollinearity (e.g. highly correlated empathy metrics, building empathy, so when courses are designed, these
testing using variance inflation statistic), a composite conflicting objectives will have to be brought into bal-
empathy score of the four empathy metrics was used to ance. Finally, it’s essential to recognize the assumptions
configure the final model, which tested for a relationship about empathy, as well as some of the potential risks of
with time, textual difficulty, and writing ability while emphasizing empathy within the classroom.
accounting for potential interactions between time and Perhaps the most important factor in a classroom
textual difficulty and repeated replication of students. that aims to increase empathy is the selection of texts
The final linear model elicited strong significant relation- to read because cognitive and affective empathy were
ships between empathy and textual difficulty (negative) strongly affected by students’ perception of the diffi-
and writing ability (positive) with a weaker and techni- culty of the text. Initially, it seemed likely that stu-
cally non-significant relationship (p D 0.056) with time dents would be most empathetic while reading texts
(table 3). These results indicate that students that exhibit that had characters that closely reflected themselves,
higher empathy scores also tend to exhibit better writing since research indicates that we are more likely to
abilities but that empathy scores also tend to decrease empathize with people we perceive to be close to us,
notably as textual difficulty increases and weakly as the literally and figuratively (Dolby 2012, 68). Thus, it
semester progresses. seemed probable that the students who attend the
Related to whether writing prompt style can influence rural Midwestern university, where this study was
empathy, the paired t-test identified individual empathy conducted, would have been more likely to identify
metric scores for analytical writing assignments to be sig- with the characters living in rural Kalamazoo, Michi-
nificantly lower (average of 14%) than their creative gan in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage than
counterparts (table 4). This suggests that students with Junior in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True
Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It was expected that
empathy would be challenged by characters from dif-
ferent cultural, contextual, and geographical back-
Table 4. Results of paired t test indicating differences between
writing prompt styles across texts grounds. The results of the study showed that this
was not the case and that, instead, textual attributes
Mean Mean
analytical creative Effect were far more important to the question of whether
Variable score score df t size P or not students demonstrated empathy in their writ-
Openness 3.01 3.61 74 ¡6.2 15% <0.001 ing. For example, when students responded positively
Cultural 2.92 3.35 74 ¡3.51 11% <0.001 to questions like, “I could easily follow the action and
Perspectives 3.07 3.59 74 ¡4.97 13% <0.001
Affective 2.8 3.44 74 ¡6.66 16% <0.001
events of the book,” their empathy scores went up.
When students rated a text as “hard to follow” or

boring, their empathetic skills correspondingly went
down. If a reader is struggling to understand the
novel at a basic level, focusing all her energy on figur-
ing out “what’s happening,” there’s little analytical
power left over for emotional and cognitive complexi-
ties. This finding confirms what many professors
(particularly in literature based fields) know about
teaching “difficult” texts, which is that as the difficulty
of the text goes up, so does student resistance and
that, moreover, experimental novels tend to evoke
more resistance than traditional, realist novels (Pipino
2005, 183). What is intriguing, potentially, about this
result, is that diversity does not seem to have as big
of an impact as has been suggested by other research.
At the same time, the relationship between textual dif-
ficulty and empathy has important implications for liter-
ature professors because it brings two objectives into
conflict. While we may want to use our classes to
increase an understanding of cultural diversity and
empathy, we also want our students to become better
readers who can tackle complicated texts. If we want stu-
dent empathy to increase, accessibility may need to be a
deciding factor when considering what texts to assign. If
we want student’s reading and literary analysis skills to
improve, though, it is essential that students are pre-
sented with texts with an increasing level of complexity.
Consideration of diversity makes this even more compli-
cated. Students found Toni Morrison’s novels, Paradise
and Beloved, challenging, especially in terms of under-
standing events and following the thread of the story.
That difficulty is textual, but some students might attri-
bute their difficulty understanding the novel to cultural
differences rather than textual challenges. Moreover, it is
hard to discern what texts students will find accessible
and which ones they will find difficult, and there are
multiple kinds of textual difficulty. It seems likely that
certain kinds of textual difficulty—unlikable narrators,
complicated imagery or language, unconventional chro-
nological organization—would affect students’ empa-
thetic responses differently, but further research needs to
be done in this area to determine what kinds of textual
difficulty most impacts empathy scores. It also seems to
be the case that if the wrong texts are chosen, reading
about difference could actually have the opposite of the
intended affect—students could become less empathetic
and more, instead of less, resistant to diversity and differ-
ence. Moreover, this study suggests that it’s not what
content is being presented; rather it is how the content is
presented and then experienced by the reader that may
determine whether or not empathy increases or
decreases.
The type of writing assignment is also crucial, since
the genre of writing also had a significant impact on
COLLEGE TEACHING 85
students’ demonstration of empathy. Students writing in
a creative mode scored substantially higher than those
writing in an analytical mode. This result is likely
because the writing prompts for the creative assignments
required students to take on the role of other characters,
which necessitated an understanding of multiple per-
spectives and the cultural frameworks of the character in
question. Students were instructed to write a scene from
a different perspective, with a few limitations: they could
not change any of the plot elements, and they had to
present the character in a way that demonstrated an
understanding of the novel. That is to say, they couldn’t
change the novel in plot, tone, or character as they imagi-
natively interacted with the text. Previous research has
linked creativity and empathy (Yaniv 2011, 56), in large
part because of the role reversal that inherently occurs
when writing fiction. When students wrote about these
characters creatively, they demonstrated a stronger cog-
nitive and affective understanding of characters and their
behavior. This may be because students enjoyed the crea-
tive assignments more than the analytical assignments,
but even more significantly, writing creatively may lend
itself more to empathy than writing analytically. In gen-
eral, analytical writing asks students to use a good deal of
judgment in order to break up ideas, characters, and
themes into smaller pieces; creative writing, on the other
hand, asks students to view texts more intuitively and
holistically, which, in turn, could engender empathy.
Once again, this finding suggests that it may be challeng-
ing to simultaneously cultivate empathy and help stu-
dents build the analytical skills necessary for literary
criticism papers, which are often a standard genre in the
discipline of literature. At the very least, to optimize an
increase in empathy, writing prompts and assignments
would have to be varied enough that students had the
opportunity to write in modes other than traditional lit-
erary analysis.
Overall writing scores did positively affect empathy
scores. Students who earned higher grades also scored
higher on the empathy measures. A number of factors
could contribute to this relationship. First, reading texts
carefully and perceptively, which is required before one
can write well about texts, often depends the ability to
interpret character’s subtle reactions and motivations.
The skills of Theory of Mind and empathy, in other
words, are closely related to the skills of literary analysis,
particularly in relation to character analysis (Zunshine
2006, Kindle Location 228). This sets up a difficult prob-
lem for researchers because it makes it almost impossible
to untangle empathy from reading and writing skills, and
it is possible that students’ empathy skills increased more
quickly than their writing skills but that they could not
demonstrate this increase in writing. It also suggests that
86 C. R. JUNKER AND S. J. JACQUEMIN
by improving students’ skills at Theory of Mind and
empathy, we might also be improving their literary anal-
ysis skills, thus linking two important objectives in many
literature classes focused on diversity.
One of the most confounding results of this study was
that students’ empathy did not change over time; stu-
dents left the class no more empathetic than when they
began the semester. Though readers in a lab setting show
a significant shift over a relatively short amount of time,
the way empathy was defined and measured in most of
these studies is substantially different from the way it
was defined and measured in this project. Similarly,
empathy in professional fields, like medicine, social
work, law, and education, indicates a particular set of
behaviors and skills that are less nuanced, trainable, and
more quantifiable. It is measured by the participants’
ability to identify emotions when looking at photos of
someone’s face or through a series of questionnaires
designed to elicit one’s own perceptions of oneself in
relation to others. This study viewed empathy as a mind-
set and a way of seeing the world. Accordingly, it was
measured through a holistic analysis of student writing.
Modifying behavior, especially when one is strongly
motivated to do so, or being able to identify emotions, is
easier to change than shifting one’s mindset or approach
to the world. Fifteen weeks may simply not be a signifi-
cant enough time to see substantial shifts in students’
mindset and empathy skills.
While empathy is, in and of itself, a trait worth develop-
ing, within the context of the literature courses that were
part of this study, empathy was part of a larger goal of
increasing an awareness of diversity. One of the purposes of
this project was to use empathy as a way to encourage stu-
dents to be more open-minded and less judgmental, particu-
larly when related to issues of difference and diversity. The
idea that empathy, which tends to focus on individuals,
often at the expense of fully accounting for the systemic
social, political, cultural, and economic forces, will trans-
form into real-world behavior or social change, may be
wishful thinking, however (Kulbaga 2008, 510, 517). After
all, one of theories that explains why readers of fiction show
stronger increases in empathy than readers of nonfiction is
that fiction provides readers with a sense of safety because
they can feel freely for negative situations without any
accompanying sense of obligation to act in a concrete man-
ner (Keen 2007, 3; Bal and Veltkamp 2013, 2-3). Though it’s
possible that once empathy has been instilled, readers may
react differently when confronted with real-world situations,
this is far from a given. Therefore, if a commitment to social
change is part of the course objectives, reading literature to
generate empathy would likely need to be paired with sub-
stantial other course activities and materials to be effective
in meeting those goals.
Though perceived textual difficulty, existing writing
abilities, and genre of writing assignment impacted over-
all empathy score, the fact that empathy scores did not
change significantly over the course of a semester sug-
gests that other components need to be added if the
course has the objective of increasing students’ overall
empathy. Service-learning, especially with a focus on
narrative-based projects, would be a natural fit in this
type of course because it would give students the oppor-
tunity to reinforce and practice the narratively oriented
empathy skills they’re learning in the classroom. Our
future research will assess the impact of incorporating
narrative-oriented service-learning projects into an
introductory literature course.
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