Here at the University of Texas, we have started a new
program called the Human Dimensions of
Organizations. It is an education
program for people in the business world that draws from the humanities and the
social and behavioral sciences to help people think like leaders. A key aspect of thinking like a leader is
understanding what the people you are leading are going through.
You might wonder why the humanities are included in a
program that is designed to help people in business. Why would a business leader need any training
in literature, for example?
One argument that is made frequently is that literature
provides people with an opportunity to experience someone else’s life. An old Caucasian man can get a sense of what
it is like to be a young African American woman by reading a story.
This is a nice sentiment, but is it actually true? That is, can you really begin to identify with someone just by reading a story? This question was addressed in an interesting
paper by Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby in the July, 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The authors explored two main questions. First, what factors influence whether a
reader will experience the world of a person who is different from themselves
when reading a story? Second, are there
consequences of experiencing the world of a different person?
In one study, the authors measured the strength of people’s
self-consciousness. Some people are
often highly focused on who they are, while others go through life without
thinking often about their identity.
After measuring the strength of self-consciousness, college student
participants read a story about a college student written in the first
person. The story described an introvert
who went to a college party. After
reading the story, participants rated how easy it was to identify with the main
character of the story. They were also
asked a number of questions about themselves, many of which asked them about
the degree to which they were introverted.
People who were high in self-consciousness were less likely
to identify with the main character of the story than those low in
self-consciousness. That is, the more that
you tend to think about your own identity, the harder it is to take on another
person’s identity. The more strongly
that readers identified with the main character of the story, the more
introverted they rated themselves to be.
That is, experiencing the world through the eyes of an introvert made
people think of themselves as more introverted.
A follow-up study demonstrated that if you reduce people’s
emphasis on their own identity, it makes it easier for them to identify with
the main character of a story. A second
follow-up study found that people are more likely to identify with a character
when the story is written in the first-person than if it is written in the
third-person. Presumably, this happens,
because a story in the third person creates distance between the reader and the
characters.
One study also found a significant relationship between
identifying with a character and later behavior. In this study, students read
about a college student who overcame a series of obstacles on the way to go
vote in an election. The story was
written either in the first person or the third person. As just described, people identified more
with the main character when the story was written in the first person than in
the third person. The 2008 Presidential
election was held one month after the study was conducted. All participants were screened to be eligible
to vote in that election. They were
contacted after the election to see how many participants actually voted. Overall, 65% of the participants who read the
first-person version of the story voted, but only 25% of the participants who
read the third-person version of the story voted.
Two other studies in this paper found that when people are
able to identify with main characters who differ from themselves in race or
sexual orientation, that gives them a more favorable attitude toward those
individuals and the groups they come from.
Putting all of this together, then, literature does provide
a way for people to experience the world in a different way. When readers are willing to identify with a
character, it can change attitudes and behavior. Readers who identify with a character will
feel more favorably toward that character and may also take on goals of that
character.
This research suggests that reading about different groups
can be helpful for aspiring leaders. One
of the greatest problems in business leadership is a failure to understand how
the work environment can influence different people in different ways. A leader who has experienced other people’s
lives will have a valuable perspective on the way that different people think,
act, and feel.
