杏吧原创

HOW do characters and events in fiction differ from those in real life? And what is it about our experience of life that fiction exaggerates, omits or captures to achieve its effects?

Effective fiction is Vera Tobin鈥檚 subject. And as a cognitive scientist, she knows how pervasive and seductive it can be, even in 鈥� or perhaps especially in 鈥� the controlled environment of an experimental psychology lab.

Suppose, for instance, you want to know which parts of the brain are active when forming moral judgements, or reasoning about false beliefs. These fields and others rest on fMRI brain scans. Volunteers receive short story prompts with information about outcomes or character intentions and, while their brains are scanned, have to judge what other characters ought to know or do.

鈥淎s a consequence,鈥� writes Tobin in her new book Elements of Surprise, 鈥渕uch research that is putatively about how people think about other humans鈥� tells us just as much, if not more, about how study participants think about characters in constructed narratives.鈥�

Tobin is weary of economists banging on about the 鈥渇laws鈥� in our cognitive apparatus. 鈥淭he science on this phenomenon has tended to focus on cataloguing errors people make in solving problems or making decisions,鈥� writes Tobin, 鈥渂ut鈥� its place and status in storytelling, sense-making, and aesthetic pleasure deserve much more attention.鈥�

Tobin shows how two major 鈥渇laws鈥� in our thinking are in fact the necessary and desirable consequence of our capacity for social interaction. First, we wildly underestimate our differences. We model each other in our heads and have to assume this model is accurate, even while we鈥檙e revising it, moment to moment. At the same time, we have to assume no one else has any problem performing this task 鈥� which is why we鈥檙e continually mortified to discover other people have no idea who we really are.

Similarly, we find it hard to model the mental states of people, including our past selves, who know less about something than we do. This is largely because we forget how we came to that privileged knowledge.

鈥淭obin is weary of economists banging on about the 鈥榝laws鈥� in our cognitive apparatus鈥�

There are implications for autism, too. It is, Tobin says, unlikely that many people with autism 鈥渓ack鈥� an understanding that others think differently 鈥� known as 鈥渢heory of mind鈥�. It is more likely they have difficulty inhibiting their knowledge when modelling others鈥� mental states.

And what about Emma, titular heroine of Jane Austen鈥檚 novel? She 鈥渋s all too ready to presume that her intentions are unambiguous to others and has great difficulty imagining, once she has arrived at an interpretation of events, that others might believe something different鈥�, says Tobin. Austen鈥檚 brilliance was to fashion a plot in which Emma experiences revelations that confront the consequences of her 鈥渃ursed thinking鈥� 鈥� a cognitive bias making us assume any person with whom we communicate has the background knowledge to understand what is being said.

Just as we assume others know what we鈥檙e thinking, we assume our past selves thought as we do now. Detective stories exploit this foible. Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz鈥檚 1945 film, begins at the end, as it were, depicting the story鈥檚 climactic murder. We are fairly certain we know who did it, but we flashback to the past and work forward to the present only to find that we have misinterpreted everything.

I confess I was underwhelmed on finishing this excellent book. But then I remembered Sherlock Holmes鈥檚 complaint (mentioned by Tobin) that once he reveals the reasoning behind his deductions, people are no longer impressed by his singular skill. Tobin reveals valuable truths about the stories we tell to entertain each other, and those we tell ourselves to get by, and how they are related. Like any good magic trick, it is obvious once it has been explained.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲hat happened in the end?鈥�