Can you think of an instance in your life where Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is demonstrated in textbook perfection? Four words sum that up – dinner and a movie.
Maslow tells us that once your physiological needs are met when you’re in a safe environment, surrounded by a loving family. Your confidence flourishes. Due to these factors, it’s likely your psyche will reach the next level. On this echelon, you can start an in-depth exploration of self. It may not be a personal development project but rather a journey through other people’s stories.
You may be wondering, how does this play out? Before we look into the significance of stories, it’s helpful to identify two impact pathways that storytelling can take:
- The external impact: From storyteller to the audience. This could be a public speaker, a political, or nonprofit leader, looking for a specific reaction or action from the people they’re addressing
- The internal impact: Here, the storyteller transforms from the inside out. Storytelling not only benefits the audience, but the speaker also reaps advantages. They learn from their narrative and pave a path for continuing transformative growth.
The External Impact
Dr. Paul Zak is known for his work with Oxytocin, a molecule our brains release when we engage in positive social interactions like creating trust and empathy. That is an example of an external impact of storytelling. According to his research, Oxytocin is incredibly important to storytelling because, as we know, stories change our behavior. When our brains encounter a good story, oxytocin is released, causing us to feel empathy. Empathy is what causes us to want to take action.
The process comes into play every time someone buys something, donates money to a charity, and even in non-commercial settings, like classrooms. In those situations, teachers use storytelling not only to create a strong connection with their students and as a learning tool. Paul Smith, author of Leader as Storyteller: 10 Reasons It Makes a Better Business Connection observed that:
- 40 percent of people are visual learners (videos, diagrams, or illustrations).
- 40 percent are auditory learners (lectures and discussions).
- 20 percent are kinesthetic learners, (practice, doing, experiencing, or feeling).
Storytelling has aspects that work for all three types. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.
Oxytocin is not the only chemical our body produces during the storytelling or listening process: In his essay ‘The Science of Storytelling: What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains,’ entrepreneur and storyteller Leo Widrich identifies research that suggests that when we hear a story, “not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are, too.”
And Lisa Cron, in Wired for Story, speaks to the additional benefits of sharing stories in business settings. “Stories allow us to simulate intense experiences without having to actually live through them. Stories allow us to experience the world before we actually have to experience it.”
We feel stories with such intensity because they trigger chemical reactions in the brain. Chemicals like cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin are released in the brain when you hear a story. Cortisol helps create memories. Dopamine keeps you engaged. And oxytocin-the feel-good chemical associated with empathy – helps you create, build and maintain deep connections and relationships.
Storytelling helps with learning because stories stick with us and they boost memory. Organizational consultant Peg Neuhauser found that learning, that stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer than learning derived from facts and figures:
Many years ago with an MBA class. A case study was given to the class about the production of wine in a particular winery in California. The question was whether the company should maintain the traditional method of production or adopt a newer one. The class was divided into three sections. One section got a narrative of how the wine was produced in the traditional way, which ended with the owner holding up a glass of new wine and saying “My father would have been proud”. A second group was given all the numbers and statistics about the traditional way, and a new way which would reduce the costs and the time scale. The third group got the account of the traditional method and the statistics as in group two. Each group was then asked of their understanding of the situation. Did they believe that the company would maintain the old method of production or adopt the new method? And how much of the case did they remember?
The second group bombarded with numbers and statistics – ended their session in the argument. They couldn’t agree. Group three also had far too much information and never reached a decision. It was only Group one that could recall the message: The company would follow the traditional path. The students in Group one could remember the story but the others struggled with the facts. This was due, in large part, to the ‘belief factor’ – the first story was believable.
However, we should emphasize that the story has to be well told. Also, the right emotional environment must be created for the audience to receive the message, and the speaker must have credibility. If such credibility (ethos) doesn’t exist, then it is unlikely that the story will be well received.
Similarly, psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.
Some stories from childhood are linked to positive emotional experiences. These tales provide an insight into the patterning system where memories are stored. Your brain seeks and stores memories based on patterns (repeated relationships between ideas). This system facilitates how you interpret the world—and all the new information you discover throughout each day—based on prior experiences.
The four-step structure of narrative—beginning (Once upon a time…), problem, resolution, and ending (…and they all lived happily ever after)—forms a mental map where new information is laid.
When new information (whether from algebra or history) is presented in a familiar narrative form, the memory structure facilitates the brain’s retention of those ideas. As time goes on the map expands to include narratives where the ending is not “and they all lived happily ever after” but rather an opportunity for the student to explore and discover possible outcomes.
The Internal Impact
Let’s explore how the narratives you choose internally affect you.
Personal narratives are a way to understand others more holistically. . They’re also an opportunity to know and understand ourselves more completely. Telling your story is a process of self-reflection. In telling your story you articulate how you understand what has happened to you, why and how it has impacted you and how you see yourself and others. Actually voicing those understandings provides an opportunity to examine the thoughts, assumptions, and ideas undergirding our story.
According to APA Dictionary of Psychology, this is the area that the upcoming field of narrative psychology investigates: The value of stories and storytelling in giving meaning to individuals’ experiences—shaping their memory of past events, their understanding of the present, and their projections of future events—and in defining themselves and their lives.
Dan McAdams, Ph.D., a Northwestern University psychology professor who has spent the last decade systematically and quantitatively studying stories.
When people turn episodes from their lives into anecdotes, it’s not just to entertain friends, McAdams says. Stories allow us to make sense out of otherwise puzzling or random events.
“Stories help us smooth out some of the decisions we have made and create something that is meaningful and sensible out of the chaos of our lives,” says McAdams. The story in your head impacts your perception, sense of possibility, and eventually your hopes and dreams.
Dr. Celia Hunt founded the MA degree program at the University of Sussex called Creative Writing and Personal Development. In her book, Transformative Learning through Creative Life Writing: Exploring the self in the learning process, she shares several potential chain-reaction sequences as a set of benefits. For example, Loosening cognitive control → Blocks to self-expression → Expressing repressed emotion → Liberating lost parts of the personality → Reconceptualizing the self → Developing reflexivity.
The most striking feature of the material from her students is the experience of opening up to a less cognitively-driven, more spontaneous, and bodily-felt approach to learning or writing. One of her students noted a shift away from ‘a narrow attitude towards learning … as an intellectual and academic exercise’ towards a more ‘fragile process of exploring and finding one’s self/voice in writing … a subtle, quiet process at times [whose] rewards are not be found in grades or marks’.
Awareness about writing our life stories loosens cognitive control to another epiphany for Dr. Hunt – fear of honest self-expression and the ensuing criticism. It feels good to be told that you are a good storyteller, but storytellers who have a responsibility to their community to tell the whole truth with emotional honesty. For that matter, they need to be in tune with their authentic self to acknowledge that they might be censoring some part of themselves or block to self-expression.
If there is self-censorship, there is a possibility that the storyteller is shying away from certain emotions. Repressed emotions are feelings you unconsciously avoid and are different from feelings you actively push aside because they overwhelm you. Repressed emotions can lead to health problems over time.
The next chain reaction, freeing lost parts of the personality, is associated with repressed emotions. appears as subpersonality, a personality mode that activates on a temporary basis to allow a person to cope with certain types of psychosocial situations.
The Balancing Act
When you look at storytelling as a two-way street it can be used to inform the other side. For example, if the purpose of storytelling is to connect with potential clients (external impact), then paying attention to your Hero’s Journey (internal impact) may ensure that you’re going through positive transformations along with corporate growth. When using Hero’s journey for enhancing the internal impact, the writer can use the symbols and stages of the hero’s quest as a roadmap of personal growth. It’s a map that can guide you through times of change, rites of passage, and big turning points on your life journey. It charts the territory of personal transformation, and what I often describe as “bridging the gap between the story’s impacts”.
Vanessa Fiore, the founder of Village-Works, an art therapy program in New Jersey recently shared her story in her book Blending – the Adventures of Life and Art. As soon as her story was shared with her community, it immediately impacted her career in the form of being offered her own TV show. As Dr. Hunt noticed, it brought up scenarios where the storyteller would reflect on how to address emotionally-charged parts of her familial challenges, especially parental estrangement, if the need to address those ever arose. Eventually, like other chain reactions, the fear got resolved to allow Vanessa to handle this part of her life story with more authenticity so that she can continue to be “an open book” and be at peace with herself – a current state that is crucial to her as a storyteller.