ABOUT
In the last six years Keith Oatley’s principal research has been on Cognitive psychology and literary fiction.
He has developed the theory that fiction is a form of simulation that runs on minds. With Maja Djikic and Raymond Mar, he is a member of a small team that conducts research on readers’ responses to short stories and other literature. The group has found the first evidence that, as compared with reading non-fiction, reading fiction is associated with improved empathy and theory of mind, and that literary fiction enables small but possibly important changes in readers’ personalities.
Keith Oatley is a cognitive psychologist and novelist. His research is on the psychology of emotions and the psychology of fiction. He is the author of seven books of psychology, that have included Such stuff as dreams: The psychology of fiction (Wiley). Among his recent books is The Passionate Muse: Exploring emotion in stories (Oxford University Press) an original novella with psychological commentaries. The first of Keith’s novels, The Case of Emily V. (Secker and Warburg), won a Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel. His most recent novel is Therefore Choose (Goose Lane Publications). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
SYMPOSIUM SESSION
Parasocial Relationships: Conversation with Four Authors of Real Characters
Parasocial Relationships and Changing World Conditions
WEBSITE
https://www.psych.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/keith-oatley