Hakemulder, 2001

 
Hakemulder, Jemeljan. "How to make alle Menschen Brüder: Literature in multicultural and multiform society." The Psychology and Sociology of Literature: In Honor of Elrud Ibsch. Dick Schram & Gerard Steen (Eds.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001. 225-242.
Summary
 
Hakemulder's article and the studies described therein approach the issue of how literature affects perceptions of groups of people. Specifically, Hakemulder focuses on stereotyped or marginalized outgroups. Hakemulder starts out by referencing sections of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, suggesting that the novel has potential to offer insight into not only the lives of immigrants and other cultures, but into one's own culture as well. He offers various quotes from the novel as reflecting aspects of human life which are universal and could potentially help readers connect with the immigrant subgroup with a greater affinity.  
Hakemulder discusses a variety of theories which attempt to explain how an individual's perceptions of different groups or cultures can be altered through literature. Rorty attributes a heightened level of understanding of subgroups to readers gaining empathy or the "imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers" (Hakemulder, 227). Nussbaum combines an element of Rorty's empathy along with the Aristotelian method of finding universality within specific narratives. Hakemulder then cites examples of "ordinary" readers being significantly affected by their own readings of stories about subgroups or outgroups, and that these readings helped facilitate a perceived bond between then reader and the group or culture they had read about.  
Previous research done in this area has not frequently used literature as a major tool in determining notions of stereotyping among groups of people, and much of the research described is unreliable. Hakemulder states that neither sociology nor psychology has done extensive work in examining how literature as a second-hand exemplar can affect individuals.  
In the fourth section, Hakemulder offers psychological explanations about the how notions of outgroups are formed by ingroups, and discusses the behaviours of these groups. He discusses some ways in which stereotypes become disconfirmed: through first-hand encounters, and through second-hand examples such as through friends or the media.  
Hakemulder describes the three different studies carried out. The first study has one group read a fictional account of an Algerian woman and another group read a comprehensive essay describing the conditions under which Algerian women live.  
The study revealed that the story had a more significant effect on participants' notions of Algerian women than the essay did, supporting Hakemulder's supposition that "role-taking" is an important aspect of why narratives might affect readers more than a non-narrative text. The second study focused on empathy: one group was asked to read a story and try and imagine themselves in the character's position, and a placebo group was given the same text under the pretext that they were doing a study on recall. This study also showed that empathy and "role-taking" affected participants. The third study examined did not yield as compelling data as the first two studies did; Hakemulder suggests the possible cause being that the protagonist is a negative character.  
Overall, Hakemulder's studies seem to indicate that literature does have an effect on perceptions of groups of people, and Hakemulder stresses that further studies should be conducted in this area.  
Critique
 
The class discussion of the Hakemulder article seemed to conclude that the article was more or less a straightforward explanation of his studies. Ethnic and cultural background tests were seen as something which, in future studies, should be implemented in order to ensure that these factors are not influencing test results. The methodology of the studies was further questioned in terms of how "social desirability" affected the results of the study. Also questioned was the equality of the story and the article chosen for the first study: could it be, that in needing to find a fiction and a non-fiction component on the same subject may have meant that the non-fiction component was less powerful than other non-fiction articles? What about non-fiction which is narrative? At times it is unclear precisely where Hakemulder draws the line between narrative and non-narrative material.  
A major problem in the study is inherent to what the study is attempting to ascertain: empathic responses in reading. In other words, did the social desirability (or the Pygmalion effect) of conforming to the moderator's instructions of "feeling what he feels" produce a response which was unnatural and therefore irrelevant to the purposes of the study? Throughout the discussion mention was made of "triangulating" the study in order to gain access to natural responses to literature.  
There was also discussion of the role empirical studies in literature should have in other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology. It was generally agreed upon that in the cases of such interdisciplinary endeavors that it is necessary to have specialists from both fields to ensure accuracy. Moreover, there was a discussion about how traditional hermeneutical study of literature and the empirical study of literature could ideally be used together. This led into a broader discussion about how this study, which ultimately aims to find out something about how readers apply their reading to social action, could be further explored through seeing, tangibly, how these readers' actions would be affected. While Hakemulder cites many studies done on the effectiveness of narratives to incite empathy, his own study does not particularly prove that a person's attitudes outside of the context of reading the narrative would be changed.  
One other concern regarding this kind of study is its relevance to understanding texts, since the main aim of this study is to discover more about how texts can affect society, and not to discover more about the text itself. This again raised issues of where empirical studies in literature should be situated in academia.  
Ultimately there is a gap in research that empirical literary studies aims to fill for literary studies and social sciences in general. Unfortunately there is always a lot of grey area, at least initially, as to exactly where this gap is situated among the social sciences. So while empirical studies is still carving a niche out for itself in the humanities, it is likely best to wait and see where empiricism in literature is located in the future and not be overly critical about what academic overlap occurs in this developmental stage.  

Document created November 24th 2005