"Human beings experience empathy in a very intense way". This was stated at the University of Navarra by Suzanne Keen, PhD from Harvard University and dean and professor of Philology English at Washington and Lee University (USA). The expert was one of the main speakers at the symposium 'Life Writing as Empathy: A Symposium on Narrative Emotions', organized by the project 'Emotional culture and identity' of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), financed by Zurich Insurance. A total of thirty experts from ten countries participated.

Professor Keen referred specifically to the empathetic response of men and women to reading: "It is true that they express differently the emotions they feel when they read and that they engage differently. But it has more to do with culture than biology."

"Although literary genre preferences," he added, "point in different directions, it is my opinion that the subject of attachment a male reader may have with a thriller may resemble that of a female reader with a story centered on the characters in a family. 

Empathy with fictional characters

Regarding the difference between how readers respond to a work of fiction and one based on real events, he stressed that "fiction frees readers to feel great empathy towards the characters, partly because they know that these belong to a fictional world and that, therefore, they will not claim their financial aid, demand economic support or expect altruistic actions on their behalf".

Suzanne Keen is dean and Thomas H. Broadus Professor at Washington and Lee University USA. Her research on affectivity and cognition combines the contributions of narrative theory with neuroscience, development and social psychology, and the science of emotion.

Professor Keen made these statements at the framework of the symposium organized by the ICS, which had as goal analyze empathy in biographical works, in the framework of emotions and emotional cultures, and was posed as an interdisciplinary dialogue from a series of texts such as memoirs, diaries, letters, films and documentaries, and online media.

The meeting addressed among other topics the teaching of empathy through literature, empathy and social identities (ethnicity, disability, gender, age and class social), representations of emotions related to empathy, reader acceptance and empathy, report and empathy, and the ethics of empathy.

Two other keynote speakers were Irene Kacandes, Ph.D., Harvard University and professor of comparative literature at Dartmouth College (USA); and Arthur Frank, Ph.D., Yale University and professor at department Sociology at the University of Calgary (Canada).