I have no idea how to test it; it would require finding some group of people who have never seen or visited anything that uses that organizational system. So no bookstores, libraries, or visits to other people who organize that way? Or maybe it would be possible to get some sort of tendency measure, and plot it against cumulative time spent in one of those places?
Either way, it's probably got something to do with our inherent identification with narrative on some level. We remember the people who tell us stories, both good and bad, but not the ones who give us facts and analysis? Maybe?
I...used to be a person who had more fiction than non-fiction (and S still is, so our ratio isn't as far off as it would be with just my stuff), and then grad school happened and teaching and now I have really a lot of books that are about things I'm only marginally interested or that are written badly but involve important topics like the media impact of influenza on the city of Winnipeg in 1919.
Actually, that one's pretty good. So that's sort of a terrible example, but you get the idea.
Either way, it's probably got something to do with our inherent identification with narrative on some level. We remember the people who tell us stories, both good and bad, but not the ones who give us facts and analysis? Maybe?
I...used to be a person who had more fiction than non-fiction (and S still is, so our ratio isn't as far off as it would be with just my stuff), and then grad school happened and teaching and now I have really a lot of books that are about things I'm only marginally interested or that are written badly but involve important topics like the media impact of influenza on the city of Winnipeg in 1919.
Actually, that one's pretty good. So that's sort of a terrible example, but you get the idea.
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