Interesting. I'll add that in Stephen Pinker's fascinating book, "The
Better Angels of Our Nature" which documents and attempts to explain the
widely unrecognized and underappreciated rapid fall in the level of
violence in the world (masked by global communications that highlights the
large amount of violence still around us), it is suggested that reading
novels in recent centuries helped people learn empathy for others beyond
their family and clan, which tends to lead to decreasing violence.