The Priming Power of Literature

“The power of example is so great, as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will… The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, tho’ not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employ’d.” – Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 4

“The joint conspiracy of letters, words, and context suffices to confer an extraordinary robustness on our mental reading apparatus. Alberto Manguel was right: it is the reader who confers meaning to the written page.” – Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (p. 48)

     Dehaene’s wording here needs unpacking: when he says “the reader confers meaning to the written page,” how exactly does this conferring occur? Is it conscious or unconscious? A function of the reading process or a decision made by the reader? These questions have important implications for an understanding of the way we read and the ways in which reading affects us.

     Johnson seems to assert in The Rambler that the process is unconscious on the part of the reader. The story forces its way into the memory and draws forth effects “almost without the intervention of the will.” This “almost” allows for some readerly control, which must be recognized. We make conscious observations while we read, ask ourselves questions, draw conclusions. However, Johnson speaks to a much more powerful connection with the text. It has the power to influence us beyond our conscious control; it directs our attention in ways we may not be aware of.

     This direction lies in the hands of the author. Unlike the reader, the writer is fully conscious at all times of his or her ability to manipulate the reader’s mind with a carefully crafted story. Johnson comments later in The Rambler that this places a certain moral responsibility on the author’s shoulders. The fact that he brings this up should underline his confidence in the writer’s power over the reader, which is strong enough to alter moral perceptions and introduce new ideas.

     How does this happen? Much of a story’s influence may be due to priming, the process of mentally rehearsing an action prior to performing it in reality. This method has been examined in countless contexts, from dieting (one imagines oneself eating a bowl of M&M’s piece by piece and thereby reduces a craving) to athletics (a diver may run through a complex dive in his head before climbing to the platform). Dehaene also discusses the role of priming in linguistics: reading a word with a similar spelling will increase the response time for reading a related word. On a larger scale, this concept may be applied to literature and behavior. By steeping our consciousness in the thoughts and actions of a fictional character, we may be engaging our brain on a level that primes us for future modes of thinking or action. In Johnson’s case, reading about a character making an important moral decision could impact one’s response to a similar situation in real life.

     It would be interesting if one could examine this correlation on a large scale. It’s easy to visualize the M&M experiment, which ought to have fairly simple, measurable results. Asking groups of divers to mentally rehearse (or not rehearse) before making a dive could be more complicated. As for giving subjects a book to read and then examining their behavior afterwards, this seems highly complicated. But if the experimental design were reduced—perhaps giving groups a similar literary passage, one in which a character makes a certain decision A, and the other in which the situation is the same but a character makes the decision B, and then placing the subjects in a similar decision-making environment and observing their choices—this may give a glimpse into the unconscious power of literature on the human mind.