Does Fiction Make Us Less Empathic?

It is said that certain kinds of fictions have the capacity to enhance our empathic powers. I offer three contributions to this debate. First, the evidence for this claim is poor. Secondly, it is important to distinguish a capacity on the part of fiction to encourage empathic responding and a capacity to enhance our rational control of empathy. Finally, I suggest a number of ways in which fiction may discourage empathy or the prosocial behaviour we expect empathy to provoke; I examine one of these ways in some detail.