Isn't it partly just a mirror-neuron thing: monkey sees, monkey do? Especially when protagonist's lead more glamorous and/or adventurous lives than most of us it can be pretty tempting to follow their example.
Mostly, however, stories allow the writer to elicit a heightened level of attention and openmindedness of the reader: a story allows one to walk a mile in the protagonist's shoes and that's a very powerful tool to... overcoming bias... It is no coincidence (science) fiction is such effective satire/social commentary.
Social conservatives who know a gay family member or friend as a human being are a lot more likely to have that persuade them to become tolerant of gay people than rational debate. Reading a book and then at the end finding out the character you like so much turns out to be gay is much the same as having a friend or a family member come out of the closet. Similarly showing the plight of an alien crew member of a 1960s space opera got some people thinking more about desegregation than the civil rights movement ever did because people tend to go on automated (non-thinking) defensive mode of prejudice and tradition, unless you can get them to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
This reminds me of this Ben Kuhn post:
www.benkuhn.net/moral-argum...
Pinker also cites literacy as a factor that expands people's in-group:
http://longnow.org/seminars...
Isn't it partly just a mirror-neuron thing: monkey sees, monkey do? Especially when protagonist's lead more glamorous and/or adventurous lives than most of us it can be pretty tempting to follow their example.
Mostly, however, stories allow the writer to elicit a heightened level of attention and openmindedness of the reader: a story allows one to walk a mile in the protagonist's shoes and that's a very powerful tool to... overcoming bias... It is no coincidence (science) fiction is such effective satire/social commentary.
Social conservatives who know a gay family member or friend as a human being are a lot more likely to have that persuade them to become tolerant of gay people than rational debate. Reading a book and then at the end finding out the character you like so much turns out to be gay is much the same as having a friend or a family member come out of the closet. Similarly showing the plight of an alien crew member of a 1960s space opera got some people thinking more about desegregation than the civil rights movement ever did because people tend to go on automated (non-thinking) defensive mode of prejudice and tradition, unless you can get them to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
Yes I want to be like James Bond for about the length of time it takes me to drive back to my home. Effect is short-lived and very far mode/ mental.
I also consider this to be weak evidence that stories tend to put people in a more far mental mode.
Evidence that this is more true of literary than popular fiction:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/he...