Potentials of Empathetic Stimuli in Creative Nonfiction: Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect and Danner’s Torture and Truth

ABSTRACT

The cognitive potentials of creative nonfiction in achieving narrative empathic engagement have not received due attention from previous researchers. Therefore, this study aims at exploring the literary attributes and narrative elements which render creative nonfiction as effective as fiction in the promotion of the reader’s empathic response. Drawing on implications from narrative theory and cognitive studies, it stresses how the inherent constituents of creative nonfiction, merging true stories into a literary template, process in guaranteeing profound empathic engagement with the text. This paper also includes a comparative study, analysing two creative nonfiction works, Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect and Danner’s Torture and Truth, and revealing how the potentials of CNF enable the two writers to utilise literary devices in an empathetically appealing narrative and tackle the same true human issue from different perspectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative nonfiction
• empathy
• narrative techniques
• authorial presence
• narrative affects

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our deep gratitude to Professor Zeinab Raafat, who, although no longer with us, continues to inspire by her example and dedication to the students she served over the course of her career.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Keen, “Narrative Empathy”, Handbook of Narratology.

2 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”.

3 Raz, “Iraqis Snap up CDs of Abuse Images”.

4 Williams, “Writing Creative Nonfiction”, 25.

5 Gutkind, You Can't Make This Stuff Up, 4.

6 Gutkind, “Introduction”, xi.

7 Ibid., xi.

8 Miller and Paola, Tell it Slant, ix.

9 Gutkind, “Private and Public”, 11–25.

10 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”, 6–18.

11 Ibid.

12 Gutkind. “Private and Public”, 20.

13 Ibid.

14 Keisner, “Me, Myself, & Cyber-I”, 193.

15 Williams, “Writing Creative Nonfiction”, 25.

16 Miller and Paola, Tell it Slant, ix.

17 Koopman, “Empathic Reactions After Reading”, 169.

18 Karam and Elfiel, “An Experimental Study of the Effect of Close Reading”, 36–66.

19 Iacoboni, Mirroring People, 268.

20 Riess, The Empathy Effect, 5.

21 Keen, Empathy and the Novel, 142.

22 Kidd and Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction”; Djikic et al., “Reading Other Minds”.

23 Panero et al, “Does Reading a Single Passage of Literary Fiction Really Improve Theory of Mind?”

24 Van Kuijk et al., “The Effect of Reading a Short Passage”.

25 Keen, “Life Writing and the Empathic Circle”, 10.

26 Burke et al., “Empathy at the Confluence of Neuroscience”, 32.

27 Koopman, “Empathic Reactions After Reading”.

28 Ibid.

29 Koopman, “Does Originality Evoke Understanding?”

30 Djikic et al., “Reading Other Minds”; Kidd and Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction”.

31 Kidd, Ongis and Castano, “On Literary Fiction”.

32 Koopman, “Does Originality Evoke Understanding?”, 171.

33 Green, Chatham, and Sestir, “Emotion and Transportation”, 54–5.

34 Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies, 14.

35 Ibid., 48.

36 Gutkind, You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

37 Williams, “Writing Creative Nonfiction”.

38 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”, 11.

39 Schaffer and Smith, Human Rights and Narrated Lives, 7.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 6.

42 Whitlock, Postcolonial Life Narratives, 10.

43 Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies, 79.

44 Whitlock, Postcolonial Life Narratives, 22.

45 Keen, “Life Writing and the Empathic Circle”, 257.

46 Keen, Narrative Form, 157.

47 Ibid., 157.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”; Williams, “Writing Creative Nonfiction”.

52 Gutkind, You Can't Make This Stuff Up, 6.

53 Keen, Narrative Form, 127.

54 Anderst, “Feeling with Real Others”, 273.

55 Green, Chatham and Sestir, “Emotion and Transportation”.

56 Eakin, Touching the World, 40.

57 Ibid., 30.

58 Koopman, “Empathic Reactions after Reading”, 75.

59 Keen, Empathy and the Novel.

60 Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy”, 213.

61 Kaufman and Libby, “Changing Beliefs”.

62 Ibid., 3.

63 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”, 18.

64 Lissa et al., “Difficult Empathy”.

65 Cheney, Writing Creative Nonfiction, 198.

66 Anderst, “Feeling with Real Others”, 273.

67 Ibid., 274.

68 Ibid.

69 Pinar, “Autobiography and an Architecture of Self”, 178.

70 Ibid., 191.

71 Eakin, Writing Life Writing, 3.

72 Koopman, “Empathic Reactions after Reading”, 63.

73 Kidd, Ongis and Castano, “On Literary Fiction”.

74 Culpeper, Language and Characterisation; Zunshine, “From the Social to the Literary”.

75 Sommer, “Other Stories, Other Minds”, 159.

76 Keen, Narrative Form, 152.

77 Ibid.

78 Keen, “Life Writing and the Empathic Circle”.

79 Sternberg, “Narrativity”.

80 Ibid., 641.

81 Keen, Narrative Form, 154.

82 Keen, “Narrative Empathy”, Toward a Cognitive Theory, 77.

83 Miall, “On the Necessity of Empirical Studies”, 54.

84 Adamson, “The Rise and Fall of Empathetic Narrative”, 86.

85 Keen, “Narrative Empathy”, Toward a Cognitive Theory, 77.

86 Byron, Dramatic Monologue, 122.

87 Kuijpers et al., “Towards a New Understanding of Absorbing Reading Experiences”.

88 Taylor et al., “Digital Storytelling and Visual Metaphor”.

89 Karam, “Conscious Application of Creativity Dynamics”.

90 Ervas, Gola and Rossi, “How Embodied Cognition Still Matters to Metaphor Studies”.

91 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 225.

92 Randall, The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life, 87.

93 Kidd, Ongis and Castano, “On Literary Fiction”.

94 Bowes and Katz, “Metaphor Creates Intimacy”.

95 Karam and Elfiel, “An Experimental Appraisal”, 3.

96 Green, Chatham and Sestir, “Emotion and Transportation”, 38.

97 Koopman, “Empathic Reactions after Reading”.

98 Anderst, “Feeling with Real Others”, 273.

99 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”.

100 Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 173.

101 Ibid., 211.

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid., 324.

104 Ibid., 325.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid.

108 Ibid., 326.

109 Ibid., 327.

110 Ibid., 331.

111 Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction”; Gutkind, “Introduction”.

112 Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 342.

113 Kidd, Ongis and Castano, “On Literary Fiction”, 44.

114 Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 344.

115 Ibid., 344–5.

116 Ibid., 333–4.

117 Keen, “Narrative Empathy”, Toward a Cognitive Theory.

118 Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 337.

119 Ibid., 226.

120 Keen, Narrative Form.

121 Sternberg, “Narrativity”; Keen, Narrative Form.

122 Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, 486.

123 Ibid., 487.

124 Ibid., 3.

125 Williams, “Writing Creative Nonfiction”.

126 Danner, Torture and Truth, xiv.

127 Ibid., xiv.

128 Ibid., 1.

129 Ibid., 3.

130 Whitlock, Postcolonial Life Narratives, 6.

131 Danner, Torture and Truth, 3.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid.

136 Ibid., 33.

137 Zunshine, “From the Social to the Literary”; Kid, Ongis and Castano, “On Literary Fiction”.

138 Danner, Torture and Truth, 1.

139 Ibid.

140 Ibid., 18.

141 Ibid., 19.

142 Keen, “Life Writing and the Empathic Circle”.

143 Conrad, “Call it What You Like”.

144 Ibid.

145 Danner, Torture and Truth, 39.

146 Conrad, “Call it What You Like”.

147 Danner, Torture and Truth, 6.

148 Ibid., 10.

149 Ibid., 11.

150 Ibid., 195.

151 Ibid., 11.

152 Ibid., 48.

153 Ibid., 205.

154 Ibid., 40.

155 Ibid., 18.

156 Karam, “Between Sensorimotor Data”, 85.

157 Bergen, “Embodiment, Simulation and Meaning”.

158 Gallese, “Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation”.

159 Danner, Torture and Truth, 22.

160 Ibid., 73.