In Keith Oakley’s article, “Changing our minds,” was published in the Greater Good Magazine on September 2, 2009, novelist and psychologist Keith Oatley argues that by imagining many possible worlds, fiction, helps us understand ourselves and others. Citing Lisa Zunshine’s 2006 book, Why We Read Fiction, Oatley shows how fiction engages our theory-of-mind faculties and gives us practice in working out what characters are thinking and feeling by using the novel, Pride and Prejudice, as an example that novels can be thought of as simulations of how people react to a combination of social forces. Per a study done by Oatley and his colleagues, two set of readers with similar analytical reasoning skills read either an essay or short story, the short-story
