The life-expanding benefits of 'deep reading'

Why literature is good for your health | Are our screens making us stupid?

Hello!

We’re naturally drawn to claims that validate our life decisions, so I was intrigued recently to see a post by the prolific book reviewer Alex Wieckowski, which reported that reading could enhance our longevity.

Surely that’s too good to be true, I thought. When I dug around in the medical literature, I found good evidence for the idea.

A team at Yale University School of Public Health, for example, examined the fates of senior citizens who had signed up for the Health and Retirement Study. Over the following twelve years, around 33 per cent of people who did not read had died, compared to 27 per cent of the regular readers – suggesting that their literary habits were somehow protective.

Someone who read for more than 3.5 hours a week was around 20 per cent less likely to die than someone who read nothing

Delving deeper, the scientists found a “dose-dependent relationship”, which means that the more someone reads, the greater their lifespan. Overall, someone who read for more than 3.5 hours a week on average was around 20 per cent less likely to die than someone who read barely anything.

Like any good scientists, the researchers checked whether a host of other factors might explain the connection. It’s possible that people with existing illnesses might not be up to reading each day, which would also put them at a greater risk of death. Similarly, people’s intelligence and education are known to influence behaviours such as smoking, which might lead to poorer health.

None of these alternative explanations appeared to cut the mustard, however. Instead, the longevity boost seemed to come from the preservation of people’s mental powers into old age. It makes sense: the stronger their mind, the better able they were to live actively and independently, which should help to preserve their health.

I was especially interested to see that the nature of their reading material determined the size of the effect; magazines and newspapers were less beneficial than books.

Books promote ‘deep reading,’ which is a slow, immersive process

“Reading books tends to involve two cognitive processes that could create a survival advantage,” the scientists propose. “First, it promotes ‘deep reading,’ which is a slow, immersive process; this cognitive engagement occurs as the reader draws connections to other parts of the material, finds applications to the outside world, and asks questions about the content presented. Cognitive engagement may explain why vocabulary, reasoning, concentration, and critical thinking skills are improved by exposure to books. Second, books can promote empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, which are cognitive processes that can lead to greater survival. Better health behaviours and reduced stress may explain this process.”

The “deep reading” of books may bring greater benefits than flicking through magazines or newspapers. (Photo by Marco Chilese on Unsplash.)

Given the many ways we can now consume literature, you may wonder whether the format is important.

Let’s consider some of the differences between print and e-books. I had long assumed that our comprehension and memory would be the same regardless of the medium – but I was wrong. As the linguist Naomi Baron points out in a fascinating piece for The Conversation, exactly the same piece of writing can be processed very differently depending on whether you read it on a screen rather than paper.

In one experiment, scientists asked participants to read an 11,000-word mystery story by the writer Elizabeth George. Those who read it on a Kindle were considerably worse at remembering the plot, compared to those who read it as a paperback. The physical act of turning pages appears to be encoded alongside the contents, and returning to those sensual memories can help us to establish a chronology.

Other studies have shown that readers find it harder to infer the overall argument of a text when they view it on a screen, and are more likely to forget the incidental details, such as the colour of a character’s hair.

Audiobooks may have their own issues. A study by Boaz Keysar and Janet Geipel suggests that we tend not to think so analytically about material when it is presented as audio, compared to written text. The facts may just go in one ear and out the other without engaging so much of the brain in between.

I’ve seen a bit of po-faced snobbery about all of this recently, as if reading only counts if you’re holding a heavy paperback, but I expect that any such differences will be pretty small in the grand scheme of things, and they cannot outweigh the benefits of reading in general. The most important thing is to choose something that engages and entertains you in the format that is best suited to your circumstances.

Incidentally, if you are looking for some excellent reading material, I’d thoroughly recommend Breadwinners by my friend Melissa Hogenboom (Mother Brain on Substack), which was published last Thursday. It’s full of insights about power imbalances at work and in the home, and how we might correct them. New Scientist described it as “fascinating and enraging”.

That’s all for now! Please consider subscribing or sharing this post if you haven’t already, and have a good week!

David x