In the blog of science magazine Nautilus associate professor Jim Davies explores the cognitive science of why we get so carried away by stories, even when we know that they are fiction.
“Why People Love to Get Lost in Books”
In the huge range of different human cultural inclinations, one of the most widespread is a fondness for stories. We just love to get lost in a good book or movie. When we do, we tend to ignore where we are and become completely absorbed in the story. Psychologists call this “transportation,” and have conducted ingenious experiments to figure out what makes a story compelling, why people seek out transportation, and what kinds of people are more likely experience the feeling. Click Here to read more…
“Why do we get transported by stories we know are false”
In Jasper Fforde’s light hearted “Thursday Next” series of books, people can use a “prose portal” to enter the world of a book, to change the plot or kidnap a character. The prose portal is an imaginative metaphor for a familiar experience: feeling taken away by a narrative, sucked into a good book so that we forget about our actual surroundings. This phenomenon is called “transportation,” and it’s common and revealing enough that scientists have done a lot of research on it. Click here to read more…