Embracing Uncertainty: How literary writing helps us change our minds.
Kim Devereux
Frontiers in Psychology October 11, 2022 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1019987 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Uncertainty Blindness Insight Cognitive dissonance Paradox Contradiction Literary novel |
| Key points | Argues that literary writing hijacks day-to-day perceptual mechanisms to create vivid imagined experience and insight, and that devices like contradiction and paradox unsettle habitual assumptions. Hypothesizes that reading literature promotes a 'dual cognition' combining sensory experience and detachment, is therapeutic, and may share benefits of mindfulness. |
Abstract
Creative writing and cognitive neuroscience can jointly illuminate how literary writing can change our minds by enhancing our tolerance for uncertainty. From my perspective as a novelist, I will show how literary writing hijacks the mechanisms of day-to-day perception and orchestrates cognition to facilitate vividness of (imaginary) experience and insight. Drawing on examples from my novel and other research, I will discuss the role of uncertainty and literary devices such as contradiction and paradox in stymieing habitual assumptions while inviting the reader's sensory imagination and conscious awareness, thereby creating an open space for insight. I hypothesize that literary writing promotes a form of dual cognition that involves both sensory experience and detachment, is therapeutic, and may share some of the benefits of mindfulness.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |