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In Brief
- Storytelling is a human universal, and common themes appear in tales throughout history and all over the the world.
- These characteristics of stories, and our natural affinity toward them, reveal clues about our evolutionary history and the roots of emotion and empathy in the mind.
- By studying narrative’s power to influence beliefs, researchers are discovering how we analyze information and accept new ideas.
When Brad Pitt tells Eric Bana in the 2004 film Troy that “there are no pacts between lions and men,” he is not reciting a clever line from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter. He is speaking Achilles’ words in English as Homer wrote them in Greek more than 2,000 years ago in the Iliad. The tale of the Trojan War has captivated generations of audiences while evolving from its origins as an oral epic to written versions and, finally, to several film adaptations. The power of this story to transcend time, language and culture is clear even today, evidenced by Troy’s robust success around the world.
Popular tales do far more than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions?
The answers to these questions seem to be rooted in our history as a social animal. We tell stories about other people and for other people. Stories help us to keep tabs on what is happening in our communities. The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of training ground, where we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs and rules of society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy.
A Good Yarn
Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. People in societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers churning out books, television shows and movies. And when a characteristic behavior shows up in so many different societies, researchers pay attention: its roots may tell us something about our evolutionary past.
To study storytelling, scientists must first define what constitutes a story, and that can prove tricky. Because there are so many diverse forms, scholars often define story structure, known as narrative, by explaining what it is not. Exposition contrasts with narrative by being a simple, straightforward explanation, such as a list of facts or an encyclopedia entry. Another standard approach defines narrative as a series of causally linked events that unfold over time. A third definition hinges on the typical narrative’s subject matter: the interactions of intentional agents—characters with minds—who possess various motivations.
However narrative is defined, people know it when they feel it. Whether fiction or nonfiction, a narrative engages its audience through psychological realism—recognizable emotions and believable interactions among characters.
“Everyone has a natural detector for psychological realism,” says Raymond A. Mar, assistant professor of psychology at York University in Toronto. “We can tell when something rings false.”
But the best stories—those retold through generations and translated into other languages—do more than simply present a believable picture. These tales captivate their audience, whose emotions can be inextricably tied to those of the story’s characters. Such immersion is a state psychologists call “narrative transport.”
Researchers have only begun teasing out the relations among the variables that can initiate narrative transport. A 2004 study by psychologist Melanie C. Green, now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that prior knowledge and life experience affected the immersive experience. Volunteers read a short story about a gay man attending his college fraternity’s reunion. Those who had friends or family members who were homosexual reported higher transportation, and they also perceived the story events, settings and characters to be more realistic. Transportation was also deeper for participants with past experiences in fraternities or sororities. “Familiarity helps, and a character to identify with helps,” Green explains.
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Add CommentAlthough the article is strongly oriented to socialization and romance, it neglects the 'cautionary tale' as an important reason - both practical and Darwinian - for storytelling. Throughout a career in the fire service I was exposed to (and told a few of my own) stories about "how I survived to tell the tale". These were meant, and accepted as, lessons on how to be effective at the job while living long enough to be a silverback and tell one's own tales. Similar conversations broke out every year near the start of hunting season, to the extent that we jokingly talked about sweeping up all the deer droppings and tracks around the fire station before leaving. Old soldiers' tales and a myriad of other survival stories may be the important gain for stroytelling beyond socialization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou raise a very good point. Stories have many purposes and these recur cross-culturally at different levels of abstraction. My own work has focused on recurring narrative structures in the most enduring stories. These works commonly involve thematic concerns that bear on fairly broad issues of ethics or politics (e.g., the value of loyalty). However, the more directly prudential concerns of cautionary tales (relating to, say, hunting) may be more context-bound, more limited in their target audience, thus more ephemeral. As a result, they would be less likely to turn up in research on cross-cultural patterns. (They would be less likely to be written down, anthologized, translated, etc.) This results in a certain sort of bias in the data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps surprisingly, this issue of data bias bears on another issue in the article--literary Darwinism. My problem with certain aspects of the literary Darwinist approach is that writers in this school tend (in my view) to draw biological conclusions far too quickly from at best scanty evidence. Consider, for example, two very plausible preliminary hypotheses. First, stories commonly have political functions. Second, dominant groups have disproportionate control over the production and preservation of widely circulated stories. Given these hypotheses, one would expect, for instance, that the representation of men and women would develop in pretty much the ways literary Darwinists report. Thus the data alone do not decide between social constructionist and biological views of gender. Moreover, this does not even touch on the further data biases that enter when stories from one tradition (e.g., Igbo stories) are selected by researchers from another tradition (e.g., European anthropologists) and translated into English. One brief example--Paula Richman's work points to a range of non-canonical versions of the RAMAYANA, some of which are different from the standard Valmiki version in ways very relevant to gender study.
These are all reasons why it is important to be bold in researching possible patterns across cultures, but also to be cautious in drawing conclusions about just what those patterns mean. For example, recurring patterns in heroic plots may tell us something about human biology. But they may also tell us something about more malleable aspects of group dynamics and the ideologies needed to maintain group stratification.
Hsu raises some good points, but some cautionary questions seem necessary. Do stories really "transcend" time and culture? I would argue they adapt to time and culture both in the way they are presented and in how they are interpreted. The medieval woman was indeed an object of beauty - blonde and blue-eyed. But she was largely silent! This is also reflected in medieval painting of women, who lack individuation. But in 1420 Robert Campin portrayed a woman, who is presented with remarkable personality (google her; she's amazing). At the same time, roughly, Pico della Mirandola was propounding the idea: "what a piece of work is man", which Shakespeare was to use in "Hamlet". The point is that the focus changed from God, doctrine, and the authority of the church, to man, and necessarily also to woman. Women had something to say, and said it. The percieved role of women, however, did not remain static. Retrograde puritanism weanted her to be sexless, obedient, and domestic, as in the novels of Richardson and often, alas, in Dickens, but Fielding and DH Lawrence made them more equal partners (google Hayez "The Kiss" for a visual). The story does not stay the same despite a superficial structural similarity, and especially the interpretation changes. This is not narrative transcending culture; it is adaption and evolution. And not always linearly. "Characteristic behaviour" tells us more about our cultural past than our evolutionary past. Tribal literature, and the "Iliad" is just that,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistells us that bravery is essential for the survival of societies struggling for ownership of the best herds, crops, and lands. In industrial societies cooperative virtues, concerns for the well-being of others, are emphasised, because that is how business survives. Another question is whether the nature of experience in youth and age need be "actual" experience or something one acquires from both actual and fictional experience in order to promote empathy. Is the "family or friends" experience of homosexuality more powerful than fictional experience. At 76 I don't make too many distinctions of this sort. Of course there is an underlying biology at work, but pace Dawkins its only part of the complex story. I accept the Dawinian evolutionary theory, but am chary of accepting it as a deterministic doctrine to be persued with all the vigour of the Spanish Inquisition.
The subject is really fascinating. But to say that "research on stories has only just begun" is a little misleading. I remember two science writers (Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) who emphasize the idea of story-telling as a very important aspect of the human race; also, I think that the matter can be explicitly linked with Dawkins's idea about memes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt a very basic level there are few opportunities for communication to take place between family members that can create the warm atmospheric loving and bonding experience a good story telling session can create. Some of my fondest memories are those when we used to sit around my grandmother while she told stories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://webshopinabox.peter-tashjian.com/WebShopInABox.htm
I work in the field of autism spectrum disorders, and developed the now popular educational intervention, Social Stories, in 1991. A Social Story describes a situation, skill, or concept in terms of the relevant social cues, perspectives, and common responses in a specifically defined style and format. The goal of every Social Story is to share information using a format, voice and content that is descriptive, meaningful, and socially and emotionally safe for its audience. Every Social Story has an overall patient and reassuring quality. This wonderful article further confirms my theory that one of the reasons Social Stories "work" so well is because stories work for all people... While Social Stories are defined by ten characteristics that are consistent with the learning profile of people with autism spectrum disorders, I believe ultimately we will discover their success is rooted in human nature. Thank you for a great article. More information on Social Stories is available at www.thegraycenter.org. - Carol Gray, President, The Gray Center for Social Learning and Understanding
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think storytelling is also important because in a stone-age setting it would expose us to the reactions of the group. And it is these reactions of anger and laughter that calibrate our moral sensitivities to those of the group. We mirror the emotions we feel around us. See my blog ADRIAANB at blogspot . com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's not forget Joseph's Campbell's work on monomyth and his 1948 "Hero of a Thousand Faces." This article adds a fascinating layer to Campbell's examination of heroic archetypes across cultures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYow!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article seems to be unaware of the vast literature of folklore studies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps this article exhibits itself as a poorly woven YARN strand knitting together a poorly made evolutionary fairy tale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi want to register in this site. i also love story telling if the listener also listens interestingly
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs biestep notes, Joseph Campbell was here first. It is amazing that there is no reference to him in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs biestep notes, Joseph Campbell was here first. Why is no credit given to him in the article? There is very little here that I did not learn by reading Campbell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTeaching ethics and philosophy in a very diverse student body, I find stories, theirs and those of world cultures, becomes a wonderful way for them not only to tell t heir stories but hear others, and sometimes see connections. Rather than always asking is the story true or not, I ask students to talk about what trusths the stories convey, and they often find common ground. J.M.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile it may be true that "Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling," the study of narrative is certainly not new. The article is focused on perspectives of 'science,' and in doing so, largely ignores the contributions of scholars and researchers from other disciplines: Brunvand, Dundes, Levi-Strauss, Foley, Ong, Aarne, Lord, Propp, van Gennep, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it curious that after many thousands of years of exhausting study of the spoken word that Jeremy Hsu believes psychology is just now discovering the magic of storytelling. The mythologist Joseph Campbell is mentioned in the replies, but he is essentially only the compiler of the thoughts of countless scholars and traditions. Linguists, folklorists, anthropologists, theologians, and all other disciplines concerned with words and their consequences (including magicians and alchemists) have flooded academic literature with tomes on the subject. Yet, nowhere in the article does Mr. Hsu mention Carl G. Jungs theory of archetypes, George Lakoffs and Mark Johnsons seminal work Metaphors We Live By, Bruno Bettelheims The Uses of Enchantment, or even The Brothers Grimm. I will grant that modern methods of studying the brain have much to contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon of storytelling, but to state that Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling, well&
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDanny R. Baxter
Donkey's like pajamas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this------------------------
After the invasion( call it what you will) in Gaza,most of the animals in the zoo died through starvation,however a few donkey's survived inspite of all the sheling etc.
Since there was nothing left in the zoo,the zoo keeper decided in order for the children to see a zebra,he would paint a donkey.................not only do I like the story but its a means to an end with purpose instead of a porpoise.
lee du ploy (hong kong)
its only serves a porpoise if you're from New York.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislee du ploy
MIT and the DARPA NETWORK CHALLENGE
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi!
You might be interested in our scientific project for the DARPA
Network Challenge https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil. We are a group
of researchers from MIT interested
in understanding how information flows in social networks.
Find all the information about our approach at
http://balloon.media.mit.edu and please write us at balloon@mit.edu if
you want to chat with us and find out more details.
Hope you find it interesting. Thank you!
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team
MIT and the DARPA NETWORK CHALLENGE
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi!
You might be interested in our scientific project for the DARPA
Network Challenge https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil. We are a group
of researchers from MIT interested
in understanding how information flows in social networks.
Find all the information about our approach at
http://balloon.media.mit.edu and please write us at balloon@mit.edu if
you want to chat with us and find out more details.
Hope you find it interesting. Thank you!
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team
MIT and the DARPA NETWORK CHALLENGE
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi!
You might be interested in our scientific project for the DARPA
Network Challenge https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil. We are a group
of researchers from MIT interested
in understanding how information flows in social networks.
Find all the information about our approach at
http://balloon.media.mit.edu and please write us at balloon@mit.edu if
you want to chat with us and find out more details.
Hope you find it interesting. Thank you!
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team