Empathy is feeling what a person feels and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It can be created by witnessing another’s emotional state, by listening to someone’s emotions and state, and by reading fiction. A component of empathy is emotional contagion in which we automatically mimic others facial expressions or movements and converge emotionally. We automatically understand shared feelings between each other. Emotional contagion affects how we react to fictional characters. We have a drive to connect with others, using empathy, which creates enthusiasm when we read fictional narratives, especially those that are told orally. We enjoy feeling empathy for others, including fictional characters (p.4). We learn socialization through character’s reactions to situations, and then learn from these, and apply these to real life.(pg. 18) In addition, by putting yourself in the character’s shoes, you can collect a sympathetic imagination. (p.4).

With different voices and facial expressions of characters, young children are trained to know what the appropriate emotional states should be in certain situations. Empathy should be cultivated in everyone to optimize performance in medicine, social services, business, and other fields.  (p.11). We empathize naturally, but sometimes not with the right individuals, which can be improved by reading fiction. Children can be trained early to care for everyone, and not just close family members, which is the natural tendency for children to do (pg. 19). Empathy can thus compensate for deficits in socialization or disposition. Empathy is the first step in the process of altruistic behavior because before performing any prosocial action, we have to have empathy for others to care for them. Psychologist Martin Hoffman has said that empathy allows the person to think about someone else’s situation other than his or her own situation. Thus, empathy leads to altruism, which leads to a better society for everyone.

Although empathy can make someone feel distressed if they put themselves in someone’s else’s shoes when that person is in pain, readers won’t have as intense negative feelings as they might have experienced in real life. Since fiction is not real, readers feel safe when reading it. Fictional narratives provide a safe place for readers to feel empathy, without having to deal with real life demand that they might have had to deal with when feeling empathy for people in the real world. This freedom of responsibility allows people to feel free to empathize and sympathize with others through affects such as shared joy and satisfaction. (p. 4).

An example of a character that we might feel empathy towards is Harry Potter because of the way his family treated him. They force him to live in a cramped room, and undermine him when they sardonically ask him, “Who would write a letter to you?” Because we feel pity for him and we feel pity when we empathize with him, we wouldn’t want others to have this feeling of misery either. Thus, we try to act differently from his family and act in a more prosocial way.