Dr. Daisy Fancourt
speaker
445 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 3 Aug
Dr. Daisy Fancourt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We're actually responding to them neurologically.
We're responding as if we were the characters.
It's a phenomenon known as neural coupling.
We're kind of coupling our brains with theirs.
We're putting ourselves in their shoes.
And this is really a kind of good exercise for our brains because it's known as theory of mind, the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and view the world from their perspective.
And it's one of the really core components of empathy, being able to imagine things not just from our own point of view, but from others.
But we also actually can even feel we're building relationships with those characters in a kind of parasocial interaction.
Yeah.
But that can be really valuable, right?
I'm sure everyone's had that feeling where you've read a book and you felt like you've got a best friend, someone who's like you.
And that's actually something known as social snacking.
By reading that book, we can feel like we've not been alone, like we've had that character, we've had that moment with that's made us feel more like ourselves.
And there's also another phenomenon called social shielding.
If you feel like you've had a character in a book who's like you, you might not feel as alone.
So even though that character was made up, if you then go into a real life situation where you suddenly feel out of place and whatever, you've got this sense that there was someone else in the fictional world that actually was like you, that can kind of shield you from that so that you don't feel solo.
And I think that as women as well, we've really seen that come out so much in literature over the last couple of decades, like a really big push in terms of female protagonists and female characters from really different backgrounds so that people can feel they can find that person
That they can have that link with.
I definitely have seen research about the benefits that we get from partly from that stress, you know, that escapism from the world that we're in.
And I certainly know like myself, if things are more stressful in life or work, I often find myself drawn back to kind of historical fiction where it feels particularly safe because it's so different.
Showing 121–140 of 445 · page 7 of 23
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