Empathic Scaffolding: How Literary Ways of Writing about Experiences Improve Readers' Empathy

According to an epistemic view of empathy, empathizers gain knowledge of a target's mental states through simulation. Since literary texts often provide explicit information about characters' mental states, the epistemic benefit of empathy in these cases is unclear. I argue that readers learn what it is like to be in a character's situation by experientially simulating their mental states. Literary descrip tions support this by helping readers identify mental states and recall similar personal experiences, key steps in a process I call "empathic scaffolding."-