Some science behind a 'reading is good for your health' claim

Not that I needed any scientific convincing whatsoever to want to read more books, but Readwise collates a few studies to that end in their latest product announcement.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine followed 469 adults over 75 for five years and found that frequent readers were 35% less likely to develop dementia than infrequent ones.

A Yale study in Social Science & Medicine followed 3,635 adults over 50 for twelve years and found that those who read more than 3.5 hours a week were 23% less likely to die. Put in pithy terms, a chapter a day keeps death away (for about two extra years).

A Rush University study in Neurology followed 294 older adults until death and found that the most mentally active among them, with reading chief among their activities, showed 32% slower cognitive decline than their average peers.

A New School study in Science randomly assigned people to read a few pages of literary fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction, or nothing, and found that the literary fiction readers were better at judging emotion from photographs of strangers’ eyes, a standard test of theory of mind and the basis of empathy. (Although this empathy claim is the most debated science of the bunch.)

Perhaps ironically, I haven’t read them yet so don’t know if they might involve a certain amount of causation vs correlation effect - but hey, either way, it’s very cool to see, and be able to cite, these sort of relationships.

The post shares these in order to draw out an interesting idea about the practice of reading as a form of health and wellness. After all, in the same way that people say they aspire to go to the gym more to help their physical health, people report similar ambitions around reading.