Erikka Askeland: Upside of settling down with a book

So it came as no surprise to find that the characters you meet when you lose yourself in a ripping yarn actually shape and influence your behaviour.

A Ohio State University study found that test subjects who got deep into a book themselves felt the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of the characters in the story – a phenomenon the researchers called “experience-taking”.

Not only did the readers feel the feelings of the protagonist, but this also had an influence on what they did later. According to the researchers, those who read about a character who overcame obstacles to vote were more likely to take part in upcoming elections.

Bookworms may shrug at the findings, because to them it is so clear that this happens.

As a child, reading would give me those “a-ha” moments, as I discovered some answer, or at least inferred one, as to why people behaved so inexplicably.

I have also found myself pulling faces while reading, in sympathy with the drama within the book’s covers, which, with any luck, also entertained others on the bus.

Of course, the Ohio study gives rise to serious questions. The research suggests reading good things that characters have done is beneficial – but does this go the other way around?

Did reading Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, for example, give aspiring Wall Street bankers a model to follow which led to the economic crisis? It is unlikely that most high-flying financiers would feel compelled to mass murder homeless people, as did the book’s main character, Patrick Bateman. Although it is easier to believe the people who insouciantly caused the recession really did like expensive suits and Huey Lewis and the News, as did Bateman.

I can recall the first time I was so gripped by a character in literature that my eyes popped. It was Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, which features a recluse driven mad by an intriguing mix of ennui, arrogant self-belief and disappointment – clearly the perfect novella for any angsty teenager. I recall the feeling that “I had no idea books could speak to me this way”, although I didn’t then lock myself in a dilapidated flat in St Petersburg to seethe and shout at prostitutes.

Previous to coming across the more refined literature of the Underground man, I had been reading widely and indiscriminately. Which does make me worry in light of some of the trash I got my hands on.

My then patchy reading list consisted largely of historical romances and other less than salubrious things. One of these was a series by US novelist Jean Auel, which followed the adventures of Ayla, a tall willowy Cro-Magnon woman who found herself living among an even earlier version of the human race, the Neanderthals.

As a way of conceiving and imagining prehistory, Auel’s Earth’s Children series was both rollicking adventure and deeply researched. The only downside – and a concern to my mum – was the fact that each of the subsequent novels in the series became more like bonkbusters. Well, they were cavemen.

As I was in the tender innocence of my pre-teens, mum tried – but mostly failed – to tape up the racy sections.

Did reading such things corrupt me? Let’s just say it did not. For example, I have never worn underthings made of animal pelts as a result of my readerly escapades. I did, however, go on to complete a degree in English literature, which was as close to a license for studying sex and death as anything I could muster.

The researchers in Ohio also uncovered another upside to “experience taking”. It turns out readers who identified with characters, and later find in the story that they were gay or black, ended up having more positive views of homo- sexuality and race.

My lifelong habit of reading has changed and widened my perceptions of the world, and for that I am grateful. And now there is proof that books – good, bad or indifferent – can serve to make the world a more tolerant place.