"In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This trait was then statistically controlled for, along with two other important individual differences: the tendency to be drawn into stories and gender. Even after accounting
for these variables, fiction exposure still predicted performance on an empathy task."
This methodology is fundamentally flawed. There is no technical fix to get around the fact that you cannot distinguish between reading causing more empathy, or greater empathy causing more reading.
They are trying to measure the relationship between personality traits and reading, and then claiming to control for personality!
I'll let you take that up with the authors. Until it's settled, we can all just reflect on whether reading stories has helped us, personally, better understand and empathize with others.
That's a fairly flippant way to deal with my criticism. If you post a study here, it's fine if you haven't read it, but you shouldn't pretend that anything that's been published is infallible.
It's flippant, but also completely honest. If mc-lovin of HN is correct that this study should be ignored and possibly retracted, then he should email the authors. Telling me about it does no good. Your original comment may be 100% accurate, but it really doesn't take away from the insight the study talks about. Your comment would have been more useful if you had a counter-argument about reading and empathy, but you only offered an unfounded criticism. Really.
The argument you are making is basically an argument from authority, which would be fine if you understood the nature of the authority in question, but you do not.
Peer reviewed journals contain a lot of garbage. Whether this should be the case is irrelevant. There are plenty of people on HN qualified to both judge and understand the study and my criticism of it. If you cannot understand my comment or for some other reason are unwilling to comment on its substance, that's fine, but there is no reason to dismiss it out of hand.
Also, there is a fundamental flaw in your logic. You keep saying that it irrelevant whether the studies methodology is valid or not, and yet this is the only evidence you give for your position. You say that I failed to give a counter-argument, and yet I directly addressed the only argument you gave for the relationship between empathy and reading, namely that study.
This methodology is fundamentally flawed. There is no technical fix to get around the fact that you cannot distinguish between reading causing more empathy, or greater empathy causing more reading.
They are trying to measure the relationship between personality traits and reading, and then claiming to control for personality!