Why do you need to read fiction? The role of transportation through fiction reading in improving perspective taking

Nurinas Dzakiyah Firman (Faculty of Psychology, Makassar State University, Indonesia)
Lukman Lukman (Faculty of Psychology, Makassar State University, Indonesia)
Faradillah Firdaus (Faculty of Psychology, Makassar State University, Indonesia)

Jurnal Ilmiah Psikologi Terapan
Vol. 10 No. 2 (2022): August

Late adolescents are reported to have poor perspective-taking. This study aimed to determine whether an improvement to perspective-taking is achieved after participants read fiction, and whether a transportation process is involved in it. The participants in this study were late adolescents (17-22 years old) with poor perspective-taking and certain degrees of experience and interest in reading fiction (N = 8). This study used a pretest-posttest-follow-up design. The Friedman test results show that there is a significant difference in the perspective-taking scores of participants before and after receiving manipulation in the form of supply of fiction reading media (p = 0.002, ̄x pretest = 11, ̄x posttest = 37.25, ̄x follow-up = 37.1). The simple regression analysis test results show that the improved perspective-taking is not influenced by the occurrence of transportation in participants when reading fiction (p = 0.072, r = 0.175, β = 0.473). The participants showed improved perspective-taking right after the manipulation treatment was given, but slightly declined in the subsequent week.