Benefits of Reading?

"What great writers do is to turn you into the writer. In literary fiction, the incompleteness of the characters turns your mind to trying to understand the minds of others." 

This study compares the effects of how empathetic people are who read literary fiction vs nonfiction vs popular fiction vs nothing. Most interestingly, the ones who read literary fiction, by authors such as Chekov, DeLillo, or Obreht scored higher on a series of tests that judge responses to other people's emotions. 

However, there's always the flip side. This link tears apart the paper as having unscientific methodology and Science magazine as publishing based solely on publicity.