I recently read an article in “Elite Daily” titled, “Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With.” That’s quite a statement, one that intrigued me. As I read the piece, I was taken with the cogent information the author offered. She wrote about the satisfaction that a reader receives from reading a book cover to cover, explaining that so much reading is now simply skimming. She suggested that readers are like people who leave voice mails and write cards, they’re becoming extinct.
Why is that development disturbing? She says, “. . . readers are proven to be nicer and smarter than the average human, and may be the only people worth falling in love with . . .” Her conclusion is backed by studies conducted in 2006 and 2009 by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada. The professor said those who read fiction are capable of holding opinions, beliefs, and interests apart from their own. Readers can entertain other ideas without rejecting them and still retain their own. Mar goes on to say, “. . .reading is something that molds you and adds to your character. Each triumph, lesson and pivotal moment of the protagonist becomes your own.”
What other advantages are there to being a reader? Anne E. Cunningham, UC Berkley, concluded in her study, “What Reading Does For The Mind,” that reading provides a vocabulary lesson that children could never attain by schooling. She found, “the bulk of vocabulary growth during a child’s lifetime occurs indirectly through language exposure rather than through direct teaching.” She says readers are more intelligent and have higher cognitive functions, thus communicating more thoroughly and effectively.
You can read this interesting article in its entirety here: Elite Daily. I’ve always felt that readers were a special breed. Now I have research that affirms my belief.
John M. Wills 