First, what this article is not
The title mentions a study, but this article reports no study of its own and names no researchers or findings. Its purpose is narrower: to place empathy among the other emotional skills and ask, in general terms, what reading might plausibly contribute to each.
Empathy is one skill among several
When people talk about emotional skills, they usually mean a group of abilities that overlap but are not the same:
- Self-awareness. Noticing your own feelings, moods and habits of reaction.
- Self-regulation. Handling strong feelings so that they do not run the whole show.
- Motivation and persistence. Carrying on with something when it is uncomfortable or slow.
- Empathy. Understanding, and sometimes sharing, what others feel.
- Relationship skills. Listening, speaking clearly, disagreeing without damage and repairing mistakes.
Empathy points outward, toward other people. Self-awareness and self-regulation point inward. Because they involve different habits, a person can be strong in one area and weaker in another. Someone may be exquisitely sensitive to others’ moods and yet be overwhelmed by their own. Someone else may stay calm under pressure and miss what a friend is feeling.
That is the first reason to be careful with the phrase “reading builds emotional intelligence.” It lumps together things that may respond to reading in different ways.
What reading may plausibly offer to each skill
Empathy. This is the most commonly discussed link. Stories invite readers to take on another point of view, so the practice of imagining others’ thoughts is built in. The fuller case for this idea, with its limits, is made in the introduction to the connection between reading and empathy. Related work on stepping into stories looks at how readers imagine characters.
Self-awareness. Readers sometimes find themselves reacting strongly to a scene and wondering why. That moment of noticing your reactions may help reflection. The effect depends on whether the reader stops to ask the question.
Self-regulation. Here the case is weaker. Reading can be a calm activity that some people use to settle themselves, which may help with calming strong feelings after a hard day. But that is using reading as a break, not necessarily learning a skill. Evidence that reading improves regulation or managing emotions in a lasting way is limited and mixed, and the same goes for building resilience.
Persistence. Finishing a long or demanding book is its own small exercise in patience, although this is more about habit than about emotion.
Relationship skills. Reading is mostly solitary. It may give you ideas about how people talk and conflict unfolds, but practicing relationship skills happens with other people, and close relationships are where those skills are actually tested.
Why the differences matter
Treating all of these as one thing leads to disappointment. Someone who reads a great deal and still finds arguments hard to handle may conclude reading “doesn’t work.” A more accurate view is that reading probably touches some of these skills more than others, and that none of them depend only on reading.
It also helps to avoid a common assumption: that more empathy is always better. Strong empathy for a distressed person can be tiring, and people in caring roles sometimes need ways to avoid being swamped. Regulation and boundaries matter alongside empathy.
What research in this area can and cannot show
Because this page reports no study, here is the general picture. Studies on reading and emotional skills typically use questionnaires, short tasks or comparisons between groups of readers. Each approach has limits. Self-reports may reflect how people see themselves, not how they behave. Group comparisons cannot rule out other causes, such as education or personality. Short experiments may show small shifts that fade. Results differ from study to study, and anyone claiming certainty is going further than the evidence.
The more modest conclusion is that reading is a reasonable thing to include in a life that also contains conversation, friendship and reflection.
Practical takeaways
- Match the habit to the skill. For empathy, read about unfamiliar lives. For self-awareness, jot down how a passage made you feel. For relationships, talk with someone about what you read.
- Let reading be reading. If you read to unwind, that is a fine reason on its own and does not need to be turned into training.
- Look at behavior, not just insight. Emotional skill shows up in what you do next time, not in how well you can describe a scene.
- Seek proper help when needed. If strong emotions, anxiety or low mood are getting in the way of daily life, a qualified professional can help in ways a book cannot.
In short, empathy is a valuable part of emotional life but not the whole of it, and reading may support some parts more clearly than others.