The Psychology of Good Storytelling

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that one of the most important skills to hone for anybody, is storytelling. Good storytellers are the life of the party, can convey and wrap meaningful, difficult, or complex information in an easy pill, and can level up their careers.

SO WHAT DO WE KNOW?

Psychologically, why does storytelling work so well? We are hardwired to pay attention to a good story.

Storytelling is a social endeavor

• It synchronizes our brains. Studies show that when people are focused on the story, their brain waves start to mimic the storyteller’s brainwaves. In other words, the storyteller can control their audience’s brains (literally).
• Emotional content is remembered more. Humans are acutely attuned to emotions (in fact, we have specific neurons that help us feel the same emotion that we see in others).
• Our social cognition and prediction centers of our brain light up when we read stories. We react mentally the same way we try to make sense of other humans in the real world and predict their behaviors.

We are hardwired for meaning-making

• We instinctively are motivated to explain our lives through stories. In split-brain patients (their two hemispheres are disconnected), one side will do one thing, and when asked to explain why they do it, the other side creates a plausible explanation even though it has nothing to do with why they just did what they did. We constantly seek meaning.
• Our social cognition and prediction centers of our brain light up when we read stories. We react mentally the same way as how we try to make sense of other humans in the real world and predict their behaviors.
• People seek coherence and stories create structure to information. Researchers found that there were 3 components that make a coherent story: Vivid details (temporal detail), Emotions (psychological context), Meaning (meaning/interpretation)
• We naturally create narratives of turning points in our lives in an effort to define our identities

Stories focus our attention

• Stories are 22x more memorable than facts.
• We are cognitively biased to pay attention to stressful, anxiety-inducing events for evolutionary reasons.

Add in stories anytime you want:

• To get someone’s attention
• Get someone deeply engaged or empathetic
• Help them understand something complex or abstract
• Be more receptive to something negative
• When you want to influence someone’s attitude, motivation, or beliefs
• Make your point more memorable
• Spread your message to others

SO WHAT…

Some elements that you can add into your stories based on psychology:

• Set the context with relevant and detailed information — what’s the situation? Who’s there? When is this happening?
• Diversify and highlight emotions and emotional changes. “I felt…” + emotional label or physiological reaction. Ex. “I felt scared” or “I could feel my heart racing faster and faster”
• Add a villain. What is the problem the hero needs to overcome? What is the barrier blocking the hero from their goal? How does this transform our hero? Ex. a time or resource constraint, a skeptical customer, a societal norm, your own limiting beliefs, etc.
• Create turning points/transformation. People pay attention to changes — “all of a sudden”, “I realized”, “just then”, “at that point”, “I used to think”, “Something weird happened” …
• Outline the promise/lesson. What does overcoming the villain influence the future for the hero? How does this ending match with your goals in telling the story? Ex. “Because of this, we learned…”, “When we get this right, our consumers start to…”, “From now on…”

Telling self-defining/personal branding stories:

• What’s your raison d’être?
• Who are you and who are you not?
• Your story should define but not overly limit — does it give you room to grow?
• Show don’t tell: How do your stories highlight your purpose? Your brand is the experiences people have with you. Why is your purpose important to your audience? You are articulating a promise that’s worth their time.

Random AI hack: use these prompts if you have a hard time articulating your “raison d’être”

• Prompt 1: What questions would you ask me in order to be able to correctly assess my motivations and strengths?
• Prompt 2: Based on the answers I’ve given, what would you say my motivations and strengths are in 3 words
• Prompt 3: Based on knowing my motivations and strengths, what types of personal stories would I be able to tell that would highlight these to others?

Where can you use stories?

Everywhere. Okay, for those who need more concrete examples, here are a few to get you started:

• Career development conversations: How can you highlight your strengths and triumphs through stories?
• Customer sales: Case studies and testimonials
• Giving feedback/mentorship: How can you provide lessons based on real examples?
• Interviews: How can you highlight your strengths and motivations through stories?
• Cross-functional sharing/Sharing complex information: For very abstract information, is there a metaphor you can use that people outside of your field can understand easily? Example: I explained “API calls” by telling a story about an english speaking baker who wanted ingredients for a cake from a french speaking stockist, and there was a little dog with a translating collar who would fetch the ingredients for the baker by asking for them from the stockist in french.
• Getting over difficult life circumstances. Personal narratives are about creating meaning and epiphanies out of life events. What are the stories we tell ourselves and do some of our stories need to be revisited or revised?
• Everything else. Parties, dates, kid’s homework, awkward gatherings with strangers, gatherings of any kind…

Resources to help you with stories

• Make a habit of gathering stories (check out homework for life)
• Have an AI evaluate your presenting style : https://app.yoodli.ai/ and https://www.poised.com/
• I’ve found this helpful to see a variety of tactics: Storytelling tactics

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Academic:

• Adler, J. M., Waters, T. E., Poh, J., & Seitz, S. (2018). The nature of narrative coherence: An empirical approach. Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 30–34.
• Hatfield, E., Rapson, R. L., & Le, Y. C. L. (2011). Emotional contagion and empathy. The social neuroscience of empathy., 19.
• LeDoux, J. E. (1994). Emotion, memory and the brain. Scientific American, 270(6), 50–57.
• LeDoux, J.E., Wilson, D.H., & Gazzaniga, M.S. (1977). A divided mind: observations on the conscious properties of the separated hemispheres. Annals of neurology, 2 (5), 417–21 PMID: 103484
• Lehne, M., Engel, P., Rohrmeier, M., Menninghaus, W., Jacobs, A. M., & Koelsch, S. (2015). Reading a suspenseful literary text activates brain areas related to social cognition and predictive inference. PloS one, 10(5), e0124550.
• Mathews, A., Mackintosh, B., & Fulcher, E. P. (1997). Cognitive biases in anxiety and attention to threat. Trends in cognitive sciences, 1(9), 340–345.
• McLean, K. C., & Pratt, M. W. (2006). Life’s little (and big) lessons: identity statuses and meaning-making in the turning point narratives of emerging adults. Developmental psychology, 42(4), 714.
• Stanford University Women’s Leadership. (n.d.). Harnessing the Power of Stories. Women’s Leadership.
• Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J., & Hasson, U. (2010). Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32), 14425–14430.

Storytelling books:

• Bewley, S. (2018). Storytelling: The Hero’s Journey Formula. Wiley.
• Dicks, M. (2018). Storyworthy: Engage, teach, persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling. New World Library.
• Gallo, C. (2014). Talk like TED: the 9 public speaking secrets of the world’s top minds. Pan Macmillan.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m the doctor that can’t give you meds or tell you why you hate your boss. But I can talk forever about cultural and digital psychology. This blog helps me stay on top of a field I love so much, share what I’ve found, and constantly push psychology’s application to life and work in meaningful ways.