Burying your head in a novel isn't just a way to escape the world: psychologists are increasingly finding that reading can affect our personalities. A trip into the world of Stephenie Meyer, for example, actually makes us feel like vampires.
Researchers from the University at Buffalo gave 140 undergraduates passages from either Meyer's Twilight or JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to read, with the vampire group delving into an extract in which Edward Cullen tells his teenage love interest Bella what it is like to be a vampire, and the wizardly readers getting a section in which Harry and his cohorts are "sorted" into Hogwarts houses.
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