Critical Thinking & Empathy
How stories let children step safely inside someone else's shoes.
The Science
When a child is truly absorbed in a story — psychologists call this "narrative transportation" — something valuable happens. They are not just watching a character make choices; they are feeling their way through them.
An experiment on fiction reading found that being emotionally transported into a story was the key ingredient: readers who were carried into the narrative showed a measurable shift in empathy, while those who stayed at arm's length did not. The lesson for story time is simple — it is the getting-lost-in-it that does the work. And when your child is the hero, they are not observing the choices at all. They are making them, and reflecting on how it feels.
The research: Bal, P. M., & Veltkamp, M. (2013). How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation. PLoS ONE, 8(1), e55341. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055341 — this study was conducted with adults; BAMJOY's child-as-hero design draws on the same transportation-and-empathy mechanism it describes.
See It in Action
Your friend drops their ice cream and starts to cry. What do you do?
For Parents: Try This Tonight
One of the simplest, most powerful questions you can ask during a story is "how do you think they felt?" It costs nothing, takes a moment, and gently builds the habit of imagining someone else's feelings — a skill that carries far beyond story time.
For Your Child: Let's Play
Ready to play? Choose what you'd do above, and see how your friend feels afterwards. There's no wrong answer — every choice is a kind one.