The thinking a person engages in while reading fiction does not necessarily lead them to a decision. This decreases the reader’s need to come to a definitive conclusion. Options can be kept open.
The reader can also stimulate the thinking styles even of people they might personally dislike. This double-release of thinking through events without concerns for urgency and permanence, and thinking in ways that are different than one’s own, literally opens one’s mind.
Reading fiction makes people become more insightful about others and their perspectives.