Literature in the Social Media Age

My professional development has followed a winding road, but I value all of the places I have been.  I started college as a mechanical engineering major because my favorite high school class was calculus. 

However, I found that my favorite classes by far my freshman year were my writing and English classes, so I decided to switch my major to English.  I was mostly glad I did -- I had great instructors, I enjoyed most of the reading, and my writing got a lot better -- but when I reached graduation, I realized that my job options were limited.  In fact, there are many careers for humanities majors, but it requires extra work to develop the skills and gain the experience needed to make yourself marketable.

Looking back, I see that the fault was mostly mine: Even though I had an excellent GPA, I was not proactive in seeking out extracurricular activities that would show initiative and develop real-world skills.

Through a series of twists and turns, I found that my abilities were valuable in the business world and, not only that, that they were not all that common.  Communication is consistently ranked as one of the top two or three skills by employers.  But what is communication? Could I have just skipped all of the literature classes and just studied grammar and read non-fiction reports?

It turns out that the answer is no.  A recent study published in the journal Science, one of the most prestigious scientific research journals in the world, says that reading short stories by Anton Chekhov (one of my favorite authors) or other fiction can increase social skills.  Here is a summary of the research:  

It found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence — skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking.

The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.

Does it matter what kind of fiction you read?  Does it have to be snobby literature? The answer is yes:

The researchers — Emanuele Castano, a psychology professor, and David Comer Kidd, a doctoral candidate — found that people who read literary fiction scored better than those who read popular fiction. This was true even though, when asked, subjects said they did not enjoy literary fiction as much. Literary fiction readers also scored better than nonfiction readers — and popular fiction readers made as many mistakes as people who read nothing.

What does any of this have to do with social media?  Employers have often told me that one of the skills university graduates are lacking is social skills -- how to interact with colleagues in groups or as individuals.  Some people blame this lack of social skills on texting, social media, etc., although I have never seen any research conclusively proving this.  Yet perhaps universities and students should not be so quick to discount the real value of the humanities - classic literature, art, and music -- in developing the human skills that are really needed.