“Reading,” according to the writer Joyce Carol Oates, “is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin.” The idea that literature orients readers to the thoughts and feelings of others goes back at least as far as Aristotle, but only recently have psychologists tried testing it in the lab.In 2013, a widely publicized study in the journal Science by David Kidd and Emmanuele Castano of the New School suggested that reading “literary” short stories immediately improved participants’ abilities to read the facial expressions, and thus the emotional states, of other people. Several media outlets (The Atlantic included) ran with the idea, embellishing it with headlines like For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov. Now, a recent study co-authored by Thalia Goldstein of Pace University in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology calls those results into question.