Literary Fiction and Empathy

I found this article to be very interesting because of the things that Albert Wendland states. Wendland says that by reading about people's lives helps you really understand where they are coming from by putting yourself in their shoes. For example, I would feel the exact way Hamlet had if my father had been murdered by his own brother. Hamlet felt frustration and anger not only at his uncle, Claudius but also his mother who quickly married Claudius, after the death of her husband. I would have never guessed that reading literary fiction would help someone gain social skills.