It teaches me about the diversity in experiences of people. If it was not for these books my estimation of the variation in life experiences among people, would have been consistently very low.
The worst impact that I have faced is that of frequently running into conflicts in discussion with others. When I rationalize decisions and actions with them.
A common symptom that I have observed when I rationalize is my ignorance of detail. This ignorance leads to generalization. I assume given my experience a given decision is not right and I generalize it across a group of people by attribution. Because I am not aware of the experience of this person I am rationalizing with, I have to do an attribution to a point item. The other option is to try to find logical fallacies or ignorance in their argument, afterwards close the discussion. The latter approach means in new encounters I have to do new thinking and search for information every time an individual makes a decision that I do not agree with. It is not good for my lazy mind.
Thus I generalize. When I do that I have underestimated the diversity of experiences within this generalized group of people, ironically a group in which I do not know a single individual well