ArticlePloS one2022
Five studies evaluating the impact on mental health and mood of recalling, reading, and discussing fiction.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- A counterfactual and random intercept cross-lagged panel analysis of the effects of reading frequency on adolescent mental health in a large longitudinal study.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- Article
- Auditory imagery and poetry-elicited emotions: a study on the hard of hearing.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Ethics-testing an eating disorder recovery memoir: a pre-publication experiment.Journal of eating disorders · 2024Article
- The 5 K run in popular fiction: Reading about parkrun and couch to 5 K.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Does reading fiction improve mental health and well-being? We present the results of five studies that evaluated the impact of five forms of exposure to fiction. These included the effects of recalling reading fiction, of being prescribed fiction, of discussing fiction relative to non-fiction, and of discussing literary fiction relative to best-seller fiction. The first three studies directly recruited participants; the final two relied on scraped social media data from Reddit and Twitter. Results show that fiction can have a positive impact on measures of mood and emotion, but that a process of mnemonic or cognitive consolidation is required first: exposure to fiction does not, on its own, have an immediate impact on well-being.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.