"A study found that reading banned books predicted civic engagement more strongly than personality traits. Reading banned books showed zero correlation with grades, violent crime, or nonviolent crime in adolescents. Reactance theory explains why censorship backfires: Restricted freedoms activate curiosity and thinking."
"Books kids choose for pleasure predicted higher GPAs while assigned school reading showed no such effect. She merely relayed the moment when adults making decisions about what she could handle had no idea what she could handle. You would have thought they had an idea what she was dealing with in terms of bullying, big emotions, and all the rest."
Research demonstrates that adolescents who read banned books show significantly stronger civic engagement than personality traits would predict. Notably, banned book reading correlates with neither academic grades nor violent or nonviolent crime rates. Reactance theory explains this phenomenon: restricting freedoms activates curiosity and critical thinking. A critical distinction emerges between pleasure reading and assigned reading—books chosen voluntarily predict higher GPAs, while school-assigned reading shows no such correlation. This pattern reflects how censorship often backfires, motivating readers to seek restricted materials and engage more deeply with content, ultimately fostering greater civic participation and independent thinking.
Read at Psychology Today
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