Stories, in pictorial format, orally narrated, and later on as narrative texts, have played a key role in human evolution and to this day continue to surreptitiously teach us things and skills. In recent decades, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun documenting the role of stories, and particularly fiction, in refining our sociocognitive skills. In this essay, I focus specifically on how stories, particularly written fiction, hone our emotion recognition skills. I present a brief overview of existing theorizing and research findings, and propose the less-is-more hypothesis, according to which emotion recognition skills are sharpened by stories that do not tell us, but rather show us the emotional life of fictional characters.

中文翻译：

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少即是多：小说语言如何促进情感识别

以图画形式、口头叙述以及后来作为叙述文本的故事在人类进化中发挥了关键作用，并且直到今天仍然秘密地教给我们一些东西和技能。近几十年来，心理学家和认知科学家开始记录故事，尤其是小说，在提高我们的社会认知技能方面的作用。在这篇文章中，我特别关注故事，特别是书面小说如何磨练我们的情感识别能力。我对现有的理论和研究结果进行了简要概述，并提出了“少即是多”的假设，根据该假设，情感识别技能可以通过那些不告诉我们而是向我们展示虚构人物的情感生活的故事来提高。