Want to be more like Katniss? Just read the book.
A new study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that reading about characters in fictional works can cause us to become more like those characters, but only if we identify and sympathize with them. In other words, if you find a character likeable or admirable, you will actually begin to think and act more like him. A talented writer, of course, can lead us to sympathize with characters we wouldn’t ordinarily like, so this study has some interesting implications. To learn more, see these stories: The Body Odd – You Are What You Read or Science Daily – ‘Losing Yourself’ in a Fictional Character Can Affect Your Real Life, or explore the research yourself.