Fritz Breithaupt

Fritz Breithaupt is a Professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s Department of Germanic Studies, with affiliations in Cognitive Science, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies. He directs the Experimental Humanities Laboratory, focusing on narrative cognition, empathy, and emotional anchors in storytelling. His work bridges neuroscience and literary analysis, emphasizing humans as homo narrans (storytelling animals).

• Education: Ph.D. in German Literature, Johns Hopkins University (1997)

Research Interests: His scholarship spans narrative thinking, empathy triggers/blockers, and the intellectual history of money. He explores how emotions shape narrative retention, co-experience in polarized societies, and non-human storytelling (e.g., AI). His 2023 Nature: Scientific Reports study on serial reproduction (12,800 participants) highlights emotions as memory anchors in retelling.

Recent Publications: His 2024-2025 articles compare human and AI narrative creativity, analyze fanfiction dynamics, and examine emotional stability in retellings. Earlier work includes “The Dark Sides of Empathy” (2019) and “Das narrative Gehirn” (2022), which became Germany’s #1 Nonfiction Book.

Scientific Awards:

• Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship
• Templeton Foundation Grant
• Austrian Ministry of Education’s Science Book of the Year (2023)

Advising and Collaborations: He mentors an interdisciplinary team of PhD, MA, and BA students in the Experimental Humanities Lab, including Claire Woodward, Snigdha Khanna, and Jillian Lee Meyer. His 20,000-story telephone game experiment (2022-2023) demonstrated emotions’ role in narrative memory. He also contributes to public discourse via Die Zeit, Der Freitag, and NPR/BBC interviews.