Investigating the Possible Relationships Between Narrative Empathy, Neuroticism and Reading Experience a Quantitative Survey Study Among Dutch Adults

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Investigating the possible relationships between narrative empathy, neuroticism and reading experience A quantitative survey study among Dutch adults

Abstract This research project aimed to investigate the possible relationships between narrative empathy, neuroticism and reading experience. By doing this, it contributes to the literature on the relationship between narrative empathy and readers characteristics, a relatively young area of research (Koopman, 2015a), because most studies investigating narrative empathy have been focused on its relationship with text characteristics (Keen, 2006). Narrative empathy has been defined by Keen (2013) as the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition. Neuroticism, a personality characteristic, reflects the tendency to be highly emotional, impulsive, anxious, and stress reactive (Costa & McCrae, 1992b). Reading experience refers to the amount of literature someone has read in the past.

An online survey (N = 92) was used to study these relationships, which included a short narrative and several questionnaires. Based on previous literature, a positive correlation between narrative empathy and neuroticism was hypothesized, which was found by the current study as well. Additionally, the study investigated the possible relationship between narrative empathy and reading experience, which has been proposed as a positive correlation by academics, although this was not supported by results of the current study. In conclusion, the study gathered interesting insights in the relationships between narrative empathy, neuroticism and reading experience useful for both academia and broader contexts.

By: Bo van Beuningen (s1008644) Supervisor: L. S. Eekhof

Communication- and Information Sciences Bachelor thesis

Radboud University 8-6-2020

Table of contents Introduction ...... 3

Background ...... 3

Theoretical background ...... 3

Research question and hypotheses ...... 8

Method ...... 11

Instruments ...... 11

Participants ...... 14

Procedure ...... 15

Statistical treatment ...... 15

Results ...... 16

Conclusion and discussion ...... 18

References ...... 22

Appendices ...... 31

Introduction

Background For a long time, researchers in the field of philosophy and social psychology have been interested in the study of empathy (Unger & Thumuluri, 1997), while only in the recent years, research on the relationship between reading narratives and social cognition has been increased (Eekhof, Van Krieken, & Willems, in preparation). According to many scholars, narrative empathy, the experience of feeling along with story characters, plays a key role in our engagement with narratives (Keen, 2006). Previous research on narrative empathy has mainly been focussed on the relationship between text characteristics and narrative empathy (Keen, 2006) and not so much on the relationship between personal characteristics of the reader and narrative empathy (Koopman, 2015a). This is somewhat paradoxical, because personal characteristics could perhaps be even more influential on narrative empathy than text characteristics (Eekhof et al., in preparation). Hence, the aim of the current project is to gain more insight in this possible relationship.

According to scholars, increasing readers narrative empathy or sympathy has several benefits, namely: increased empathy towards an outgroup after reading a story about this particular outgroup (Johnson, 2013), increased pro-social behaviour (Johnson, 2012), higher levels of affective empathy after reading (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013), persuasion (Green & Brock, 2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002; Van Boven & Loewenstein, 2003), and changes in attitudes and beliefs in the direction of character’s opinions or events in stories (Green, 2007; Green & Carpenter, 2011). This emphasizes the practical relevance of understanding the driving forces behind narrative empathy, which is where the current study aims to contribute to.

Theoretical background Narrative empathy The word ‘empathy’ is derived from German translation of ‘Einfuhlung’ by Titchener (1909, as cited in Spreng, McKinnon, Mar, & Levine, 2009), which means ‘feeling into’ (Wispe, 1987, as cited in Spreng et al., 2009). ‘Narrative empathy’ has been defined as: ‘the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition’ (Keen, 2013, p. 1). This implies that not only real situations and people, as is the case with so called ‘real-life empathy’, but also narratives are able to evoke empathic reactions (Koopman, 2015a).

The narrative empathy vs. real-life empathy distinction is one dimension in the debate on empathy (Keen, 2013). Other two common distinctions are between ‘cognitive’ or ‘cold’ empathy versus ‘affective’ or ‘warm’ empathy (Davis, 1983; Decety & Jackson, 2006; Preston & De Waal, 2002; Vingemont, & Singer, 2006), and ‘trait empathy’ versus ‘state empathy’ (Koopman, 2015a).

Empathy is often distinguished as being either cognitive (being able to understand someone else’s perspective; Leverage, Mancing, Schweickert, & William, 2011) or affective (feeling similar emotions as someone else feels; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994, as cited in Koopman, 2015a). Cognitive empathy is also known as ‘Theory of Mind’ (Leverage et al., 2011) and affective empathy has been called emotional contagion or emotional empathy (Hatfield et al., 1994, as cited in Koopman, 2015a). Many academics propose that both forms are independent and are mediated by different brain structures (Koopman, 2015a; Nathanson, 2003; Shamay-Tsoory, Aharon-Peretz, & Perry, 2009). The current research project will focus on this second type of empathy.

Another well-known classification is the distinction between trait empathy and state empathy. Although the concept of trait empathy has been researched frequently in the past, there is no consensus about a clear definition (Spreng et al., 2009). Trait-empathy can be seen as a personality characteristic, which is more or less fixed, while state empathy is empathy that could be increased temporarily (Koopman, 2015a), e.g., by hearing about another’s emotional state, another’s condition or exposure to narratives (Keen, 2006). The current study will focus on narrative empathy, and therefore on state empathy, because narrative empathy means that temporary empathic reactions are evoked by narratives (Koopman, 2015a).

The related concept of ‘sympathy’ was used in literature earlier than empathy, and in the early days, the two terms were even used interchangeably (Keen, 2007, as cited in Koopman, 2015a; Titchener, 1909, as cited in Koopman, 2015a). Furthermore, the two concepts are still considered related (Keen, 2006), because in practice these reactions tend to often co-occur (Kuijpers, 2014). Recently, several scholars (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Coplan, 2004; Koopman, 2015a; Mar, Oatley, Djikic, & Mullin, 2011) tried to define the difference between the concepts. This resulted in the following distinction: empathy can be used to express the experience of feeling someone else’s feelings, while sympathy means feeling concern for someone, without experiencing their feelings (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Keen, 2006). This can be summarized as ‘feeling with’ (empathy) vs. ‘feeling for’ (sympathy; Keen, 2006).

Dimensions of narrative empathy Because the main concept of the current study is narrative empathy, understanding its dimensions and driving forces is highly valuable. It has been suggested that ‘character identification’ (Keen, 2006), ‘immersion’ (Keen, 2016), ‘transportation’ (Johnson, 2012; Mar & Oatley, 2008), and ‘absorption’ (Kuijpers, Hakemulder, Tan, & Doicaru, 2014) influence the degree of narrative empathy a reader experiences. Those concepts will be outlined below.

Character identification has been defined by literary scholars as: ‘the process whereby readers put themselves in the place of a character and experience what the character feels’ (Altenbernd & Lewis, 1969, in Jose & Brewer, 1984, p. 4). Several reader characteristics have been proposed to determine character identification, namely judgements of realism of the character (Keen, 2006), perceived similarity with the character (Altenbernd & Lewis, 1969; Jose & Brewer, 1984; Klemenz-Belgardt, 1981), similar previous (emotional) experiences (Miall & Kuiken, 1999), and support of the character’s goals and plans (Oatley, 1994). Although its relationship with narrative empathy was suggested by researchers, it has not been investigated empirically yet (Keen, 2006).

The term immersion is used to explain experiences of involvement in narratives (Qin, Rau & Salvendy, 2009), and represents the state of being deeply involved in the narrative (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000). The process of transportation, as defined by Green & Brock (2000), occurs when individuals are impacted on a cognitive and emotional level by the narrative because they are fully engaged in it. This results in an absorption of the reader in the narrative (Oatley, 1999a), entering the story world and losing contact with the actual world (Kuijpers et al., 2014). This sounds similar to the term absorption, and in fact, Koopman (2015b) makes no distinction between absorption and transportation, which further indicates that the two concepts overlap. However, not all types of narratives seem to evoke the same degree of narrative empathy, which will be outlined below.

Narrative characteristics influencing narrative empathy A narrative, as defined by Bruner (1986), is ‘a distinctive mode of thinking about agents, their intentions, and the vicissitudes these intentions meet’ (as cited in Djikic, Oatley, & Moldoveanu, 2013, p. 30). Humans are the only known species who communicate to each other by using narratives (Boyd, 2009) and they have been used for a long time to provide order and structure to the world (Neitzel, 2005). Narratives can be classified into two dimensions: ‘fiction’ vs. ‘non-fiction’ and ‘literary’ vs. ‘popular’.

Fictional narratives have been defined as: ‘a reality outside of itself, and a reality in the image of new ideas and new ideals’ (Widdowson, 1984, p. 212), which suggests that there are no guidelines about how things should happen (Horowitz, 1990). In that sense, non-fiction is the exact opposite, because it reflects the real world (Caulley, 2008). Fictional narratives tend to have greater potential for perspective taking (Keen, 2007, as cited in Koopman, 2015a), a concept which is part of narrative empathy (Keen, 2013), because fictional narratives have a larger distance to the real world than non-fictional ones (Keen, 2007; Oatley, 1999b; 2002). Therefore, readers are more likely to approach the text with lower suspicion and scepticism (Keen, 2007).

Literary fiction defamiliarizes readers by the systematic use of several linguistic stylistic devices (Miall & Kuiken, 1994a; 1994b; 1999), which results in disturbing readers’ expectations and challenging their thoughts (Kidd & Castano, 2013). Literary fiction tends to be polyphonic, which means narratives often include multiple independent viewpoints and voices (Bakhtin, 1984). This implies that readers must provide their own explanations to events in the narrative, caused by the absence of a single authorial perspective (Bakhtin, 1984). The aim of popular fiction is to entertain readers, which can be characterized as being more passive (Kidd & Castano, 2013). In general, this type of fiction is easier to read, more predictable and contains more internally consistent characters (Gerrig & Rapp, 2004). According to findings of Kidd and Castano (2013) only literary fiction is able to increase trait empathy. Oatley (1999b) found similar results: literary text had more trait empathic abilities than popular texts had. However, the distinction between the two types of fiction can be valued as dynamic and fuzzy (Frow, 2014, as cited in Panero et al., 2016).

Studies stated above tried to investigate the relationship between narrative empathy and text characteristics, which has been the main focus in previous literature about narrative empathy (Keen, 2006). While personal characteristics of the reader could potentially have more influence on narrative empathy than text characteristics (Eekhof et al., in preparation), this first relationship has not been researched much in the past (Koopman, 2015a). This seems contradictive because it has been emphasized that readers react different to narratives (Djikic et al., 2013). However, personal characteristics which have received attention in previous research are for example personal experience with the subject, trait empathy (Koopman, 2015a), neuroticism (Komeda, Tsunemi, Inohara, Kusumi, & Rapp, 2013), and exposure to literature/reading experience (Koopman, 2015a; Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015). Results of these studies will be discussed in more detail in this paper.

The current study focusses on those final two reader characteristics (i.e., neuroticism and reading experiences), because not much research has been conducted about their possible relationships with narrative empathy. Hence, the current project aims to clarify those relationships further. The following sections will discuss those two reader characteristics.

Neuroticism Mischel (2004) defines personality traits as: ‘the marked variations in typical responding to the environment that distinguish one person from another’ (as cited in Lahey, 2009). The current study focusses on neuroticism, a personality trait that implies how individuals emotionally react to threats, frustrations, or losses (Costa & McCrae, 1992a; Goldberg, 1993). Furthermore, a person who is highly neurotic can be described as: generally apprehensiveness, often frustrated, short-tempered, often angry at others, most of the times feeling unhappy, shy, anxious (to interact with people), impulsive, emotional (Costa & McCrae, 1992b), stress reactive, and worried (Costa & McCrae, 1992b; Lucas & Baird, 2004). In general, highly neurotic individuals are valued as emotionally unstable and therefore the opposite of being highly neurotic is being emotionally stable (Cobb-Clark & Schurer, 2012).

Being high on neuroticism tends to relate to several broader characteristics. For example, Milgram & Tenne (2000) found that neurotic individuals tend to be worse at decision making than emotionally stable individuals. Moreover, Weissman, Prusoff, and Klerman (1978) found that highly neurotic patients had worse outcomes of depression disorders than other patients. Self-criticalness, sensitivity to other’s criticism and feeling of personal inadequateness are also positive correlates with neuroticism (Watson, Clark, & Harkness, 1994). This implicates that being highly neurotic could have consequences for one’s personal and professional life.

Neuroticism can be measured by the Big Five Inventory, developed by Costa & McCrae (1992c), which operationalizes human personality into five dimensions: extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness (to experience), and neuroticism (Costa & McCrae, 1992b). Together with the dimension extraversion, neuroticism forms the ‘Big Two’ in terms of the affective or trait-emotional aspect of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992a; Goldberg, 1993; Mooradian, Davis, & Matzler, 2010). Extraversion is associated with warmth, sociability, and cheerfulness (Lucas & Baird, 2004), while neuroticism refers to the emotional responses an individual has towards negative stimuli (Costa & McCrae, 1992a; Goldberg, 1993).

Reading experience Research suggests several correlates with increased reading experience, for example increased abilities to understand others (Koopman, 2015a; Mar et al., 2009: Mar & Oatley, 2008), increased social cognitive abilities (Black & Barnes, 2015; Kidd & Castano, 2013; Kidd, Ongis, & Castano, 2016; Mar et al., 2006), and increased self-knowledge, because it makes readers more aware of people who suffer, which leads to more willingness to help them (Koopman & Hakemulder, 2015). Therefore, exposure to narratives could even lead to actions (Hunt, 2007).

Conversely, reading experience also tend to have negative consequences, e.g., academic problems (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Stanovich, 1993), language problems (Chall, 1983, as cited in Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997), and cognitive problems, because it has been suggested that reading is an important variable in knowledge adoption (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997). This implicates that understanding reading experience (and its possible relationships with other concepts) has significant practical implications, which emphasises the relevance of the current project.

Research question and hypotheses The current study aimed to examine the possible relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism, and the possible relationship between narrative empathy and reading experience. This has been investigated through the following research questions:

RQ1: To what degree does narrative empathy relate to neuroticism?

RQ2: To what degree does narrative empathy relate to reading experience?

Neuroticism According to the proposition that trait empathy correlates positively with narrative empathy (Koopman, 2015a), hypotheses on the relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism could be developed based on findings about the relationship between trait empathy and neuroticism. However, studies investigating the latter relationship provided mixed results (Del Barrio, Aluja, & Carcia, 2004). Some found a negative relationship (e.g., Shiner & Caspi, 2003), some found a positive relationship (e.g., Eysenck & Eysenck, 1987; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991; Eysenck, Pearson, Easting, & Allsopp, 1985), while others did not found one (e.g., Barrio et al., 2004). Due to those conflicting results, constructing a hypothesis would be difficult.

Analysing results of the few studies that examined the relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism suggest a positive correlation between the two concepts. Komeda et al. (2013) found a positive correlation between an increased empathy for neurotic characters in narratives and neuroticism, which can be explained by the similarity hypothesis. As proposed by Komeda, Kawasaki, Tsunemi & Kusumi (2009), this contains that people prefer reading about characters who look like themselves in terms of personality and therefore experience increased narrative empathy when reading about similar characters. Similar to neuroticism, this effect was found for the personality trait extraversion (Komeda et al., 2013).

However, since the correlation between narrative empathy and neuroticism was found for control characters as well (Komeda et al., 2013), a positive correlation between narrative empathy and neuroticism can be proposed. Furthermore, Larsen and Ketelaar (1991) found a positive correlation between strength of the reaction towards negative stimuli and neuroticism, which might suggest a positive correlation between the two concepts as well. This can be assumed because a stronger reaction towards negative stimuli can be associated with experiencing increased narrative empathy while reading about a protagonist coping with negative experiences. Based on those findings, the first hypothesis of the current project was:

H1: There will be a significant positive correlation between narrative empathy and neuroticism.

Reading experience Because of the relationship between state empathy and narrative empathy (Koopman, 2015a), it can be suggested that narrative empathy also correlates positively with reading experience. This can be done based on the assumption that exposure to narratives correlates positively with abilities to understand others (Koopman, 2015a; Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, Paz, & Peterson, 2006), which is similar to cognitive trait empathy (Leverage et al., 2011). Additionally, a positive correlation between narrative empathy and reading experience was found in Koopman (2015a). Hence, the second hypothesis was:

H2: There will be a significant positive correlation between narrative empathy and reading experience.

To conclude, the following conceptual model (see Figure 1) was tested in the current study.

Figure 1. Conceptual model.

Method

Instruments Stimulus story Participants were provided with a stimulus story which took between five and ten minutes to read and was selected from the Dutch literary canon. The story (named ‘Prins’) was written by Annelies Verbeke (2017) and was published in the collection ‘Halleluja’. The protagonist of the narrative was a woman, who had to bring her old mother to a retirement home. This can be seen as an emotional event for the protagonist and her negative emotions increased even further when she saw that a robot was going to assist her mother in this retirement home. Prior to the narrative, participants were instructed to read it as they usually would.

The chosen narrative was fictional, because fictional narratives have more potential to increase narrative empathy (Keen, 2007, as cited in Koopman, 2015a; Keen, 2013; Oatley, 1999b) than non-fictional narratives have. It also was a literary narrative because those are, in contrast to popular literature, more able to increase trait empathy (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Oatley, 1999b). It can be suggested that this also counts for narrative empathy, because of the relationship between trait empathy and narrative empathy (Koopman, 2015a). Moreover, the narrative is one in which the protagonist experiences negative emotions, because Keen (2006) found that when a protagonist experiences negative emotions, it has a higher potential to evoke readers’ narrative empathy in contrast to other emotions.

Narrative empathy Narrative empathy, ‘the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition.’ (Keen, 2013, p. 1), was measured by (a modified version of) the EDI scale, developed by Igartua & Paez (1998). The scale was later revised and translated from Spanish to English by Igartua (2010). It contains 14 items and was originally developed to evaluate identification with characters in narratives. According to Igartua and Paez (1998), this concept is driven by four psychological processes: the ability to fantasize or image, the ability to become one with the character, cognitive empathy, and emotional empathy (Igartua & Paez, 1998). The 14 items loaded on two factors according to Igartua (2010): the first factor was related to the first two processes, and the second factor was related to the third and fourth process.

A high correlation between the two factors was observed (Igartua, 2010), emotional empathy was the most important dimension in the development of the scale (Igartua & Paez, 1998) and sufficient internal consistency, structural, discriminant, and concurrent validity outcomes were found related to the traditional scale (Igartua & Paez, 1998). This suggests that using the EDI scale is a valid tool for measuring narrative empathy. Because of this, not only the items related to empathy were featured in the survey, but the complete EDI scale.

Because the survey was targeted at native Dutch speakers, the EDI scale was translated from English to Dutch. Originally, every item of the EDI scale is measured on a 5-point Likert Scale, varying from 1 = not at all, up to 5 = very much (Igartua, 2010), but for the current study all items were measured on a 7-point Likert Scale ranging from 1 = disagree, up to 7 = agree. This was done because it provided more detailed data. The measurement level of this variable was interval. The mean score of this scale (see Table 1) was reliable (α = .91) and was used to execute the statistical analyses. The EDI scale items used in the survey can be found in Appendix 1.

Neuroticism Neuroticism, a personality characteristic that reflects the tendency to be highly emotional, impulsive, anxious and stress reactive (Costa & McCrae, 1992b), was measured with by the Big Five Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992c). The Big Five Inventory is valued as the most dominant (Matthews & Deary, 1998), most established (John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1987), and most valid (John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1987; Ozer & Benet, 2006; Paunonen, 2003) model to study personality. It has been used by many scholars and this makes comparing findings easier (Denissen, Geenen, Van Aken, Gosling, & Potter, 2008), which further motivates to use (part of) this scale.

Several smaller versions of the Big Five Inventory have been developed in the past, because the original questionnaire is relatively extended (Denissen et al., 2008). The current project used eight items of the Dutch translation of the Big Five Inventory (Denissen et al., 2008), that together form a tool to measure neuroticism. The measurement originally contains a 5- point Likert Scale, varying from 1 = disagree strongly, up to 5 = agree strongly, while in the current project a 7-point Likert Scale was used, which ranged from 1 = disagree strongly, up to 7 = agree strongly. This was done because it provided more detailed data. The variable was measured at interval level. Mean score of this scale was reliable (α = .87) and was used to execute the statistical analyses. Items used in the survey to measure neuroticism can be found in Appendix 2. 12

Reading experience Reading experience reflects the amount of literature someone has been exposed to in the past. The Author Recognition Test by Stanovich and West (1989) was used to measure this concept. Although it is no direct measure of reading experience, it is considered to be a strong predictor of it (Koopman, 2015a, 2015b; Kuijpers, 2014; Moore & Gordon, 2015), and especially of reading experience related to fiction (Acheson, Wells, & MacDonald, 2008). Furthermore, the ART is considered to be more suited than similar literature recognition tests (Stanovich & West, 1989; West, Stanovich, & Mitchell, 1993) and considered as highly reliable (Mol & Bus, 2011; Stanovich & West, 1989). The ART does not assume that the recognition of an author’s name also means having read the author’s work, but it assumes a positive correlation between reading experience and general knowledge of author names (Moore & Gordon, 2015).

Because the current research investigated a Dutch population, the Dutch Author Recognition Test (DART), developed by Brybaert, Sui, Dirix and Hintz (2020), was used. Same as the original ART, the DART can be seen as a highly reliable and valid measurement of reading experience (Brybaert et al., 2020). This scale is designed to measure reading experience of Dutch and Belgian participants, because it solely contains names of Dutch and Belgian fiction authors. The DART can be found in Appendix 3.

Respondents received a list of names of fiction authors, were they had to indicate which ones they recognized as authors. The ability to provide more correct answers was considered as having more reading experience. In order to prevent guessing behaviours, the list also included names of unknown individuals, which was informed to the participants beforehand. Individual DART scores were calculated by the use of the so called ‘standard method’ (Moore & Gordon, 2015), which includes subtracting the selected number of unknown names (false answers) from the selected number of real author names (correct answers). Thus, DART scores were analysed on ratio measurement level.

Control variables Several control variables were measured in the survey, namely age, mother tongue, gender, educational level, occupation, autism diagnoses, dyslexia and other reading related problems, familiarity with the narrative, and comprehension of the narrative. The latter variable was measured by three questions about the content of the story, in order to determine to what degree participants have read the narrative in a serious way.

This allowed the researcher to remove participants who seemed to not have read the narrative (i.e., participants who filled in more than one comprehension question incorrectly), which increased validity of the results. Due to extremely unequal groups the variable measuring occupation was transformed into a binary one, distinguishing students from non-students. See Appendix 4 for the exact items that were used to measure the control variables.

Participants Participants of the current study had to meet the following criteria: being 18 years or older and being a native speaker of Dutch. The survey was online for two weeks and received 137 responses. After excluding participants that were younger than 18 years or/and were not a native Dutch speaker (n = 4), completed less than 98% of the survey (n = 25), spent more than two hours completing the study (n = 13), and filled in more than one comprehension question incorrectly (n = 3), 92 responses stayed, which were used in the analyses.

On average, participants were 34.93 years old (SD = 16.89), and age varied from 18 to 68 across the sample. More women (N = 60) than men (N = 32) participated in the survey. Most of the participants were (former) WO (University) students (N = 43) in comparison to the other educational levels: HBO (Professional education) students (N = 32), MBO (Vocational education) students (N = 11), VWO (Pre-university education) students (N = 4), and HAVO (Pre-professional education) students (N = 2). Almost all participants reported to be students (N = 46) or employed (N = 41). Only some reported themselves as unemployed (N = 1), pensioned (N = 3), and other (N = 1). One participant reported to have been diagnosed with an autism related disorder, while six participants reported to have (diagnosed) reading problems1. No participants reported that they had read the narrative before.

The personal network of the researchers2 and the Radboud University participant system (SONA) were used to distribute the online survey. A standard message was used to approach possible participants via social media, which can be found in Appendix 5. No financial compensation was provided to the participants, although there was a chance to win one of two 25 euro gift cards.

1 When testing the hypotheses, excluding the participants reporting to be diagnosed with autism related disorders (n = 1) and/or (diagnosed) reading problems (n = 6) did not result in different findings compared to including those participants. Therefore, responses of those participants have been included in the data analyses. 2 Because the survey was part of a larger one, all involved researchers in this larger survey contributed to the data collection procedure by distributing the survey through their personal network. 14

Procedure The survey was part of a larger one, which was designed in Qualtrics, a program for building online surveys. At the start of the survey, participants were informed about the content of the survey, the average time needed to complete the survey, the researchers and their background, the target group of the study, privacy concerns and voluntariness, and other relevant topics.

The structure of the survey was the following. Firstly, participants where provided with the introduction and consent form, the exclusion criteria, and respondents not meeting the criteria (see ‘Respondents’) were send to the final page of the survey. After this, the Big Five Inventory (although only questions related to the neuroticism dimension), the narrative, the translated EDI scale, questions about comprehension of the narrative, and the Dutch Author Recognition Test (DART) followed. Questions related to the control variables and a final page which indicated the end of the survey and thanked the participant concluded the survey.

The Big Five Inventory was intentionally placed before the narrative, because the other way around answers on those questions could be influenced by the story. The survey contained a progress bar, indicating a participant’s personal progress. Beforehand, the survey was estimated to take approximately 45 minutes and therefore this was also mentioned at the first page of the survey. In reality, the selected participants took almost 50 minutes on average (SD = 19 minutes) to complete the survey, while it ranged from almost 23 minutes to one hour and 58 minutes (after excluding participants who took more than two hours).

Statistical treatment Two Pearson correlation tests were performed to test the hypotheses. One post-hoc exploratory Pearson correlation test and three One-Way ANOVA tests were performed to investigate possible relationships between narrative empathy and demographic variables.

Results

The results section of this report has been divided into three subsections: descriptive analyses of the three main concepts, confirmatory analyses aiming to test the hypotheses and explorative analyses investigating possible relationships between narrative empathy and demographic variables.

Descriptive analyses Descriptive statistics of the three main concepts are provided below in Table 1.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and reliability measurement of the EDI scale (1 = low on narrative empathy, 7 = high on narrative empathy), the Neuroticism scale (1 = low on neuroticism, 7 = high on neuroticism) and the DART score.

N M SD α EDI scale 92 4.01 1.06 .91 Neuroticism scale 92 3.89 1.11 .87 DART score 92 25.34 20.10 -

Confirmatory analyses A significant positive correlation was found between narrative empathy (EDI scale) and neuroticism (Big Five; r(90) = .21, p = .042). Participants who scored higher on narrative empathy also scored higher on neuroticism. Figure 2 visualizes this positive correlation.

Figure 2. Scatterplot between narrative empathy (EDI scale) and neuroticism (Big Five).

No significant correlation was found between narrative empathy (EDI scale) and reading experience (DART score; r(90) = .04, p = .697). Figure 3 provides insight in the spread of the responses on both variables.

Figure 3. Scatterplot between narrative empathy (EDI scale) and reading experience (DART score).

Explorative analyses To investigate possible relationships between the main concept of the study (narrative empathy) and demographic variables, several explanatory analyses have been executed.

Age No significant correlation was found between narrative empathy (EDI scale) and age (r(90) = -.10, p = .351).

Gender A One-Way ANOVA did not show a significant effect of gender on narrative empathy (EDI scale; F(1, 90) = .01, p = .917).

Educational level A One-Way ANOVA did not show a significant effect of educational level on narrative empathy (EDI scale; F(4, 87) = .62, p = .650).

Occupation A One-Way ANOVA did not show a significant effect of occupation on narrative empathy (EDI scale; F(1, 90) = 3.60, p = .061).

Conclusion and discussion

The current study investigated the possible relationships between narrative empathy, neuroticism and reading experience. A moderate positive relationship was found between narrative empathy and neuroticism: participants who scored higher on the personality characteristic neuroticism also tend to score higher on narrative empathy. No relationship was found between narrative empathy and reading experience of the participants, nor between narrative empathy and demographic characteristics of the participants. The results related to the hypotheses will be discussed further and linked to other scientific findings in this section of the paper.

The found relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism supports the first hypothesis, which was deducted from findings by Komeda et al. (2013), and Larsen and Ketelaar (1991). This suggests that results by Larsen and Ketelaar (1991), proposing that neurotic people tend to react more strongly to negative stimuli, are also applicable to a narrative context. Hence, this further suggests that neurotic people are not only more emotionally involved in real-life events, but also when being exposed to narratives, and therefore this supports the assumption that neurotic people are generally more emotionally involved than emotionally stable people. This assumption has been featured in definitions and operationalisations of neuroticism (e.g., Cobb-Clark & Schurer, 2012; Costa & McCrae, 1992b; Goldberg, 1993), although increased emotional involvement in narratives has not been part of the definitions. Scholars might have to consider revising definitions of neuroticism if future studies on the relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism will find similar results.

However, there might be a possibility that this result can be explained by the similarity hypothesis, as has been done by the results of Komeda and colleagues (2013). The similarity hypothesis states that readers tend to experience more narrative empathy for protagonists if they are similar to them (Komeda et al., 2009). It could be the fact that the protagonist of the narrative was highly neurotic and therefore neurotic readers showed more narrative empathy, because they perceived the protagonist as more similar to them. However, the current study did not investigate if the protagonist had a neurotic personality, which can be a suggestion for future research to investigate to what degree the similarity hypothesis is able to explain correlates between narrative empathy and personality characteristics.

While the second hypothesis suggested a positive relationship between narrative empathy and reading experience, this was not found in the current study. This hypothesis was developed based on the found relationships between the two concepts in Koopman (2015a), and the relationship between trait empathy and reading experience (Mar et al., 2005). Therefore, the fact that no relationship between the two concepts was found questions relationships between state empathy, narrative empathy and reading experience. Hence, future research should focus getting more understanding in those relationships.

Nevertheless, the fact that no relationship between narrative empathy and reading experience was found, while it was found in Koopman (2015a), could be due to methodological differences between the studies. Koopman (2015a) used the ART to measure reading experience, while the current study used the DART. Although both scales have been valued as a reliable measurement for reading experiences (Brybaert et al., 2020; Mol & Bus, 2011; Stanovich & West, 1989), they differ in terms of included author names, which could explain why results by Koopman (2015a) oppose to results of the current study.

The fact that this relationship was absent in the current study tentatively suggests that having much reading experience might not be a criterium to experience narrative empathy. This could indicate that it is not required to be an experienced reader to experience narrative empathy, which can provide some positive practical insights for both readers and writers. If experience would not matter much, readers with a large variety of experience levels would be able to experience narrative empathy. Therefore, most people would be able to enjoy stories more, because increased narrative empathy is linked to increased identification with characters in narratives (Keen, 2006) and identification is generally seen as a determinant for media enjoyment (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004).

If experience levels might not matter, it will be easier to reach the positive effects of increased narrative empathy by using narratives (e.g., easier persuasion, Green & Bock, 2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002; Van Boven & Loewenstein, 2003; and increased empathy towards an outgroup featured in the narrative, Johnson, 2013) by a broader variety of readers. This indicates that the current study might provide interesting insights for a broader audience, e.g., because it emphasizes the relevance of using narratives in communicative utterances, which could be useful for communication practitioners. However, more research should be conducted to be able to develop universal statements about the possible relationship between narrative empathy and reading experience.

Limitations Except from the fact that the current study provides useful findings, some limitations still have to be considered, which can function as improvements for related future research projects.

As well as the DART, Brybaert et al. (2020) developed the DART_R, which was constructed to measure reading experience of younger respondents. The authors recommend using this scale for younger respondents, which has not been done in the current study. Results of the current study might have been more valid if the DART_R was provided to younger respondents. However, Brybaert et al. (2020) did not indicated what particular age should be the boundary for the use of this scale, which makes it difficult to determine which age group should fill in the DART and which age group should fill in the DART_R.

Originally, the EDI scale has been developed to measure identification with a protagonist (Igartua & Paez, 1998). The current study used this scale to measure narrative empathy, because of a lack of alternative scales to measure narrative empathy and high correlates between the empathy dimensions and the other dimensions included in the EDI scale (Igartua, 2010). However, validity of the results might be lower because narrative empathy was surveyed with a measurement originally developed for measuring a different (although strongly related) concept.

No measurements were taken to investigate how quickly after reading the narrative questions examining narrative empathy were filled in. Therefore, it could be possible that readers answered those questions after a relatively long period of time, resulting in forgetting about their empathic experiences when reading the narrative. This might have led to lower validity of the results. However, participants that took more than two hours to complete the survey were removed, which ensures that the time between reading and answering the narrative empathy questions was not extremely long for any of the participants included in the analyses.

More women than men participated in the current study, and the majority of the sample was higher educated (i.e., HBO and VWO). Hence, results might be more representative for a population of Dutch higher educated adult women than for the Dutch adults population. On the other hand, this (the majority of the sample being higher educated women) characterizes the typical sample in psychological and behavioural research, and therefore this can be seen as a general limitation of this type of research.

Suggestions for future research To gain more understanding about the possible relationships tested in the current study, additional research should be conducted. Therefore, several suggestions for future research have been provided, which are mainly based on the insights gathered from the discussion of the findings and limitations of the current project.

The found relationship between narrative empathy and neuroticism supports the statement that readers characteristics relate to narrative empathy, which highlights the necessity for more research into possible relationships between narrative empathy and readers characteristics in general. This area has not received much attention in the past (Koopman, 2015a), although should be focussed on more intensively in future research projects to be able to understand possible drivers of narrative empathy better.

To gain more understanding of the explanatory power of the similarity hypothesis in the relationship between narrative empathy and personality characteristics, more research should be conducted. In those future studies, it will be crucial to measure the degree of similarity the reader experiences with the protagonist, and to explore how this variable relates to narrative empathy. It would also be interesting to investigate to what degree the similarity hypothesis can be seen as valid for different personality characteristics.

The current study suggest that neurotic people show more empathy after reading a narrative than emotional stable people do. It would be interesting to find out if similar results can be found for narratives used in different types of media, such as movies and videogames. This would provide highly relevant contributions to further development of this personality characteristic and even has substantial practical implications for media developers.

Findings did not provide support for the second hypotheses, which results in questioning the relationship between narrative and state empathy. Results might suggest that narrative empathy is not as related to reading experience as was expected, while both types of empathy have been suggested to be intensively related (Koopman, 2015a). Future research should focus on getting more insights in the relationship and differences between narrative and state empathy, and how those concepts relate to reading experience. This can be done by featuring all three concepts in the same study, such as has been done in Koopman (2015a).

Nevertheless, the present study provides interesting insights into the relationships between narrative empathy, neuroticism and reading experience among a Dutch adult sample.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: EDI scale The EDI scale was translated by the researcher from English to Dutch.

1. I thought I was like the characters or very similar to them 2. I thought that I would like to be like or act like the characters 3. I identified with the characters 4. I felt “as if I were one of the characters” 5. I had the impression that I was really experiencing the story of the characters 6. I felt as if I “formed part of ” the story 7. I myself have experienced the emotional reactions of the characters 8. I understood the characters’ way of acting, thinking or feeling 9. I tried to see things from the point of view of the characters 10. I tried to imagine the characters’ feelings, thoughts and reactions 11. I understood the characters’ feelings or emotions 12. I was worried about what was going to happen to the characters 13. I felt emotionally involved with the characters’ feelings 14. I imagined how I would act if I found myself in the place of the protagonists

Igartua, J. J. (2010). Identification with characters and narrative persuasion through fictional feature films. Communications, 35(4), 347-373. 10.1515/comm.2010.019.

Appendix 2: Neuroticism scale (Big Five Inventory) Items regarding the neuroticism dimension of the Big Five Inventory. Scores on items ending with an (R) had to be recoded when analysing the data.

Ik zie mijzelf als iemand die …

1. Somber is. 2. Ontspannen is, goed met stress kan omgaan. (R) 3. Gespannen kan zijn. 4. Zich veel zorgen maakt. 5. Emotioneel stabiel is, niet gemakkelijk overstuur raakt. (R) 6. Humeurig kan zijn. 7. Kalm blijft in gespannen situaties (R) 8. Gemakkelijk zenuwachtig wordt.

Denissen, J., Geenen, R., Aken, M., Gosling, S. & Potter, J. (2008). Development and Validation of a Dutch Translation of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Journal of personality assessment. 90, 152-7. 10.1080/00223890701845229.

Appendix 3: Dutch Author Recognition Test (DART) Hieronder staan een aantal namen, sommige zijn namen (of pseudoniemen) van fictie- schrijvers, andere zijn verzonnen namen. Geef aan welke namen van schrijvers je kent, door deze aan te klikken (de naam wordt dan rood). Als je een onjuiste naam aanklikt telt dat als een negatieve score. Raad dus niet naar het juiste antwoord, maar klik alleen die namen aan waarvan je zeker weet dat ze kloppen. Je hoeft de auteurs niet gelezen te hebben.

Brybaert, M., Sui, L., Dirix, N. & Hintz, F. (2020). Dutch Author Recognition Test. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339586392_Dutch_Author_Recognition_Test.

Appendix 4: Control variables Age The variable age was questioned by the following item: ‘Wat is je leeftijd?’ (‘What is your age?’). Respondents were able enter their age (in numbers) in a text box below the question.

Mother tongue A multiple choice question: ‘Is Nederlands je moedertaal?’ (‘Are you a Dutch native speaker?’) was asked to determine the participant’s mother tongue. Answer categories included: (1) ‘Ja, ik ben opgegroeid met Nederlands (en eventueel andere talen) als moedertaal.’ (‘Yes, Dutch is my native language (optionally together with other languages’) and (2) ‘Nee, ik heb Nederlands pas op latere leeftijd geleerd.’ (‘No, I learned Dutch when I was older.’).

Gender Gender of the participants was examined by the question: ‘Wat is je gender?’ (‘What is your gender?’), with the following answer categories: (1) ‘Vrouw’ (‘Female’), (2) ‘Man’ (‘Male’), (3) ‘Anders’ (‘Other’) and (4) ‘Wil ik niet zeggen’ (‘I prefer not to answer this question’).

Educational level Educational level was questioned by asking: ‘Wat is je hoogst genoten opleiding, of de opleiding die je momenteel volgt?’ (‘What is the highest level of education you have completed, or you are currently enrolled in?’). Answer categories were: (1) ‘Vmbo/Mavo’ (‘Pre-vocational education’), (2) ‘Havo’ (‘Pre-professional education’), (3) ‘Vwo’ (‘Pre- university education’), (4), ‘MBO’ (‘Vocational education’), (5) ‘HBO’ (‘Professional education’), (6) ‘WO’ (‘University’), (7) Anders, namelijk (‘Other, namely:’) and (8) ‘Wil ik niet zeggen’ (‘I prefer not to answer this question’). After the seventh category, respondents were allowed to enter text.

Occupation The question: ‘Welke omschrijving past het beste bij jouw situatie?’ (‘Which answer is most in line with your current situation?’, featuring answer categories: (1) ‘Studerende (eventueel met bijbaan)’ (‘Student (with part-time job)’), (2) ‘Werkende’ (‘Employed’), (3) ‘Werkloos’ (‘Unemployed’), (4) ‘Gepensioneerd’ (‘Retired’), (5) ‘Anders, namelijk:’ (‘Other, namely:’) and (6) ‘Wil ik niet zeggen’ (‘I prefer not to answer this question’) was used to measure occupation. After the fifth category, respondents were allowed to enter text.

When analysing the data, a binary distinction was made between ‘Student’ (category 1) and ‘Non-student’ (category 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), because of extremely unequal N’s per category.

Autism The variable Autism was measured by the question: ‘Ben je gediagnosticeerd met een stoornis op het autistische spectrum?’ (‘Have you been diagnosed with a autism related disorder?’), containing the answer categories: (1) ‘Ja, namelijk:’(‘Yes, namely:’), (2) ‘Nee’ (‘No’) and (3) ‘Wil ik niet zeggen’ (‘I prefer not to answer this question’). After the first category, respondents were allowed to enter text.

Dyslexia or reading problems The question: ‘Heb je dyslexie of leesproblemen’ (‘Have you been diagnosed with dyslexia or other reading disorders?’) was asked to investigate dyslexia or other reading disorders. Answer categories will be: (1) ‘Nee, ik heb geen dyslexie of andere leesproblemen’ (‘No, I do not have dyslexia or other reading disorders’), (2) ‘Ja, ik ben gediagnosticeerd met dyslexie’ (‘Yes, I am diagnosed with dyslexia’), (3) ‘Ja, ik heb leesproblemen, maar ik ben niet officieel gediagnosticeerd met dyslexie’ (‘Yes, I have reading disorders, but I am not offically diagnosed with dyslexia’), (4) ‘Ja, ik heb leesproblemen anders dan dyslexie, namelijk:’ (‘Yes, I have reading disorders other than dyslexia, namely:’) and (5) ‘Wil ik niet zeggen’ (‘I prefer not to answer this question’). After the fourth category, respondents were allowed to enter text.

Appendix 5: Standardized message to approach possible participants Tijd over? Help ons!

Ik en vier andere studenten van de Radboud Universiteit doen onderzoek naar de manier waarop verschillende mensen teksten verwerken. Onderdeel daarvan is een experiment in de vorm van een online vragenlijst. Het invullen kost wat tijd, maar daarmee voorzie je ons van hele belangrijke input. Bovendien maak je kans op een van de twee boekenbonnen t.w.v. €25,-! Je kunt meedoen door op onderstaande link te klikken.

Alvast super bedankt voor je hulp en veel groeten,

{Name of the researchers} https://radboudletteren.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8pLZb13ryIs0Ikt.

Appendix 6: Verklaring geen fraude en plagiaat Print en onderteken dit Verklaring geen fraude en plagiaat formulier en voeg dit formulier als laatste bijlage toe aan de eindversie van de bachelorscriptie die in papieren versie wordt ingeleverd bij de eerste begeleider.

Ondergetekende

Bo van Beuningen, s1008644

Bachelorstudent Communicatie- en Informatiewetenschappen aan de Letterenfaculteit van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, verklaart met ondertekening van dit formulier het volgende: a. Ik verklaar hiermee dat ik kennis heb genomen van de facultaire handleiding (www.ru.nl/stip/regels-richtlijnen/fraude-plagiaat), en van artikel 16 “Fraude en plagiaat” in de Onderwijs- en Examenregeling voor de BA-opleiding Communicatie- en Informatiewetenschappen. b. Ik verklaar tevens dat ik alleen teksten heb ingeleverd die ik in eigen woorden geschreven heb en dat ik daarin de regels heb toegepast van het citeren, parafraseren en verwijzen volgens het Vademecum Rapporteren. c. Ik verklaar hiermee ook dat ik geen teksten heb ingeleverd die ik reeds ingeleverd heb in het kader van de tentaminering van een ander examenonderdeel van deze of een andere opleiding zonder uitdrukkelijke toestemming van mijn scriptiebegeleider. d. Ik verklaar dat ik de onderzoeksdata, of mijn onderdeel daarvan, die zijn beschreven in de BA-scriptie daadwerkelijk empirisch heb verkregen en op een wetenschappelijk verantwoordelijke manier heb verwerkt.

Plaats + datum Zaltbommel, 20-5-2020

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