Question: do you think that when people are attached to multiple fictional characters that are very different has no overall effect on a person?

Rose Turner answered on 11 Jun 2017:

That’s a really interesting question. There has been some research that has shown that people sometimes feel more sad when a fictional character that they like dies (on a soap, for example) than when a real-life person they don’t know that well dies! I think that shows that we can know a character is made-up but we can still feel very attached to them.

Just like in the real world, fictional characters can be very different, and we can like them or dislike them, or feel attached to them, for lots of different reasons. I think this can change how we think about people in the real world. If you read about a character who is going through something you have never experienced, it might help you to feel more sympathetic towards real people going through that same thing, because you have gained some insight through reading about that experience through the eyes of the character. When you see through a character’s eyes, you share in their experience a bit. So I do think that strong attachments to characters change us in the sense that they change how we think about and feel about particular situations.