Story on science

The Science of the Story

Stories are told in the body.

It doesn’t seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness—from dreams or fantasies—and traveling through words or images to other minds. We see them outside of us, on paper or on screen, never under the skin.

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But we do feel stories. We know in our gut when we’re hearing a good one—and science is starting to explain why.

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Experiencing a story alters our neurochemical processes, and stories are a powerful force in shaping human behavior. In this way, stories are not just instruments of connection and entertainment but also of control.

We don’t need the science of storytelling to tell a story. We do, however, need science if we want to understand the roots of our storytelling instinct and how tales shape beliefs and behavior, often below conscious awareness. As we’ll discuss, science can help us to defend ourselves in a world where people are constantly trying to push our buttons with the stories they tell.

The better we understand how stories unfold in our bodies, the more equipped we are to thrive in the story-rich environment of the twenty-first century.

Punched in the gut

Imagine your attention as a spotlight. When someone tells you a story, they are attempting to control that spotlight. They are manipulating you.

We all do this every day, all the time. You try to hold attention as you tell a story to coworkers over coffee; I’m trying to hold your attention as I tell the story of the science of storytelling.

There are many different ways to draw the spotlight of other people’s attention—and all of them instinctively or deliberately tap into basic human drives. Here, for example, is a very short story attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

How does this story make you feel? I can speak for myself: When I first encountered it as an undergraduate, my attention was instantly captured. And when I realized, after a beat, what it meant, I felt punched in the gut.

The story works because it triggers our natural negativity bias—that is, the hardwired human tendency to focus on the bad, threatening, dangerous things in life. It specifically activates the fear and despair we’d feel if our child died, even if we don’t yet have one of our own.

We’re really good at focusing the spotlight of our attention on what might hurt us—or hurt those close to us, especially our children. What happens in our bodies when we throw the spotlight on a threat? We get stressed out.

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And what’s stress? That’s a tool nature gave us to survive lion attacks—in other words, stress mobilizes our body’s resources to survive an immediate physical threat. Adrenaline pumps and our bodies release the hormone cortisol, sharpening our attention and boosting our strength and speed.

But unlike other animals, humans have the gift and the curse of being susceptible to stress even when we don’t face a direct physical threat. This we do by telling ourselves, and each other, stories. They are the best way we have to communicate potential threats to other humans—and help each other to prepare for overcoming those threats.

Most of us will never face a flesh-and-blood lion, yet in stories we transform lions into potent symbols of beautiful death. That’s the essence of many stories: facing and overcoming dangers, which will persist, multiply, and mutate in our minds and, in some cases, become metaphors for more-immediate dangers.

As Neil Gaiman writes in his novel Coraline: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

When someone starts a story with a dragon, they’re harnessing negativity bias and manipulating the stress response, whether they intend to or not. We’re attracted to stressful stories because we are always afraid that it could happen to us, whatever “it” is—and we want to imagine how we would deal with all the many kinds of dragons that could rear up in our lives, from family strife to layoffs to crime.

But we don’t necessarily need dragons to capture attention, right? At the very beginning of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, she slowly introduces us to a babe, alone in the world, under constant threat. We instinctively take the side of the “boy who lived” because at the beginning of the story, he’s so vulnerable.

Most of the Star Wars films take another approach, by trying to inspire a sense of awe—the emotional reaction to something so vast we can’t immediately grasp it—which research shows triggers behaviors associated with curiosity, like turning to other people for answers.

How stories unfold in our bodies

While authors can capture our attention in many different ways, sooner or later a villain will appear and a conflict will develop. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone may start gently, but Lord Voldemort looms in the background. As the action rises and Harry’s society of witches and wizards slides toward civil war, our attention sharpens and our bodies release more cortisol. If that doesn’t happen, a story loses us. Our spotlight turns to something else.

But cortisol alone isn’t enough to keep our bodies engaged with a story. The conflicts in Harry Potter and Star Wars grab our attention—and the settings can inspire awe and wonder—but they wouldn’t involve us nearly as much if they didn’t also include characters we come to care about.

As we see fictional characters interact, our bodies tend to release a neuropeptide called oxytocin, which scientists first found in nursing mothers. Oxytocin has subsequently turned up in studies of couples and group-bonding—indeed, we find oxytocin whenever humans feel close to each other, or even just imagine being close. That’s why stories trigger oxytocin: When Princess Leia finally told Han Solo that she loves him in The Empire Strikes Back, your body almost certainly released at least a trace level.

That’s not all that’s happening as we become involved in a story and its characters. The brain activity of both storytellers and story listeners starts to align thanks to mirror neurons, brain cells that fire not only when we perform an action but when we observe someone else perform the same action. As we become involved with a story, fictional things come to seem real in our bodies. The storyteller describes a delicious meal and the listener’s mouth can start to water. When the characters in the story feel sad, the listener’s left prefrontal cortex activates, suggesting that they feel sad as well.

As the plot thickens, the good author pushes the characters we care about into conflict with the villain. Our palms sweat, we grip the hand of the person next to us—who is likely having the same reaction. We might feel the tension in our neck. Our body is braced for a threat, but the threat is completely imaginary.

That’s when the storytelling miracle comes to pass: As the cortisol that feeds attention mixes with the oxytocin of care, we experience a phenomenon called “transportation.” Transportation happens when attention and anxiety join with our empathy.

In other words, we’re hooked. For the duration of the story, our fates become intertwined with those of imaginary people. If the story has a happy ending, it triggers the limbic system, the brain’s reward center, to release dopamine. We might be overcome by a feeling of optimism—the same one characters are experiencing on the page or screen.

Where do we end and where does the story begin? With the most intense, involving stories, it’s hard to tell.

How stories bring people together

At the beginning of the series, Harry Potter is extremely vulnerable. This inspires protectiveness in the reader.

Why in the world would evolution grant us this ability? Why would nature actually make us crave stories and make transportation a pleasurable experience?

I’ve already suggested part of the answer: We need to know about problems and how to solve them, which can enhance our survival as individuals and as a species. Without a problem for the characters to solve, there is no story.

But there might be other reasons. Recent research suggests that this process of transportation in fiction actually increases our real-life empathic skills. Studies published in 2013 and 2015 exposed people to literary fiction or high-quality TV—and then gave them the “mind in the eyes” test, in which participants look at letterboxed images of eyes and try to identify the emotion behind them. In the 2015 study, participants who watched Mad Men or The Good Wife scored significantly higher than did those who watched documentaries or simply took the test without first watching anything.

In other words, the empathic skills we build with stories are transferrable to the rest of our lives: They are advantageous in real-world situations where it helps to have insight into what another person is thinking or feeling—situations like negotiating a deal, sizing up a potential enemy, or understanding what our lover wants.

All these qualities make stories adaptive, in evolutionary terms. They’re not just nice to hear. They can actually increase our chances of survival.

How stories change behavior

Research finds that stories shape our behavior in other ways that can help us to thrive.

Study after study after study finds that stories are far more persuasive than just stating the facts. For example, one found that a storytelling approach was more effective in convincing African-Americans at risk for hypertension to change their behavior and reduce their blood pressure. A study of low-performing science students found that reading stories of the struggles of famous scientists led to better grades. A paper published last year found that witnessing acts of altruism and heroism in films led to more giving in real life.

Indeed, stories actually seem to trigger the neurochemical processes that make certain kinds of resource-sharing possible. This biological activity can lead to profound behavioral changes, including costly acts of altruism.

When Claremont Graduate University economist Paul Zak and colleagues showed a dramatic film of a father and son struggling with cancer, they found that both cortisol and oxytocin spiked in nearly all of the viewers—and that most of them donated a portion of their earnings from the experiment to nonprofits. This didn’t happen in participants who watched a simple film of the father and son wandering around a zoo. In fact, the researchers found that the more cortisol and oxytocin released, the more likely participants were to make charitable donations—and in one experiment, Zak found that hormone levels predicted donations with 80 percent accuracy.

This is the neurochemical process that makes fundraising and taxes possible—and inspires people to mobilize large-scale support for enterprises like political campaigns, churches, universities, libraries, or, for that matter, the United States as a nation. Stories enable us to form relationships with strangers and ask them to make small sacrifices for something that is larger than themselves.

I picked Star Wars and Harry Potter as examples because those are “master narratives” that have been embraced by, without exaggeration, billions of people. There’s something awe-inspiring about the idea that those stories have changed so many people right down to the molecular level, all of them together feeling that spike of cortisol when Darth Vader appears or that soothing flow of oxytocin when Hermione throws her arms around Ron after they escape some Death Eaters, our bodies resonating with each other across time and distance. These global narratives don’t just entertain; they also impart ideals of heroism, compassion, and self-sacrifice.

The dark side of storytelling

But this process has a dark side. Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort do not exist in our world, but there are certainly people who wish us harm—and, as the story of Anakin Skywalker so well reveals, there’s a shadow-self inside all of us that is capable of wishing harm on someone else.

A spike in cortisol can make us aggressive—one half of the “fight-or-flight” response we hear so much about—and oxytocin has been implicated in competition between groups. People dosed with oxytocin in the lab show strong preferences for their own in-groups, however defined, from school bands to fraternities. Oxytocin appears to play a role in trying to take what out-groups have. People dosed with oxytocin are also more likely to indulge in group-think—going along with collective decisions even when they believe those decisions are wrong.

In short, stories form groups, a process enabled by oxytocin. It is no accident that communities—fandoms—have sprung up around Harry Potter and Star Wars, sometimes in (mostly) playful competition with each other. It’s harmless fun for fans, but not all stories are as benign as these, in intent or outcomes. Stories can carry us toward ideals that are destructive, especially to out-groups. Stories are a form of power over bodies, but it’s a power that we can use or misuse.

Take a look at this video, below, contrasting the speeches of two political leaders—both expert communicators—about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. And as you watch the video, think about their intentions. What emotions are they aiming to stir in their audiences? What kind of emotions do they trigger in you?

I’m not trying (here, at least) to tell you who to vote for in November. But given the power of stories, it’s dangerous to hear them without asking ourselves what reactions they are triggering in our bodies. Mr. Trump’s speech causes my stomach to clench and my mouth to go dry; in asking me to put my own group ahead of others, he triggers anger and anxiety. I believe that’s his intent. President Obama’s speech urges me to reflect and to think compassionately about all of humanity. His words lift my heart, just a bit—and, again, I believe that’s intentional.

I can feel their words in my body, but I’m not helpless against them. Research also suggests that people are more than capable of defending themselves against the power of stories. We can cognitively override the emotional identification and transportation stories trigger by trying to balance them against the facts. In cultivating awareness of the impact of a story, we can tell a different one, or revise the story to fit the facts or our own experience. We live in an story-saturated world—coming at us through screens as well as through pages and performances and music—and today, I think it’s essential for us to understand all the ways in which leaders and organizations are trying to manipulate us into believing what they want us to believe.

A lot of psychotherapy these days involves getting people to pay attention to the stories they tell themselves. In therapy, we are told to ask ourselves: Am I telling myself a story that helps me to grow and flourish, or is it one that diminishes my life’s possibilities? We need to do the same to stories other people tell us.

More than that, we need to look at our own responsibility for the well-being of others, and cultivate awareness of the impact of our own stories, of our own power over the bodies of other people. What intentions do we bring to the stories we tell? Are we using our power to lift people up and help them to see solutions to the problems we face as individuals and as groups? Or are we using our power to reveal the worst in ourselves, and so pit people against each other? Do we communicate things that make us feel good about ourselves—or that make us feel worse?

Stories bring us together, but they can also tear us apart. They can bring us joy but they can also incite hatred. We are all born with the power to tell stories. It’s a power we need to learn to use well and wisely.

This essay is based on a talk for the Berkeley Communications Conference, delivered on June 1, 2016.

The top 10 science stories of 2019, including that black hole picture

Science is good at measuring progress — and where we fall short. Science News’ Top 10 stories of the year reflect that duality, from celebrating great achievements to highlighting problems we had hoped to avoid.

This was the year in which more than a decade of effort by hundreds of scientists who created a globe-spanning “telescope” to see the previously unseeable paid off. The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of a black hole. That now-iconic picture confirmed a fundamental theory of how our universe works (Einstein, still right) and opened up a new era of exploration, making it our top story of 2019.

That wasn’t the year’s only big milestone. Just seven years after its development, the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 moved into human clinical trials in the United States to see if the approach can treat cancer, blood disorders and an inherited form of blindness. And Google claimed quantum supremacy, saying it had created a qubit-based computer that could speedily solve a problem that would take a classical supercomputer thousands of years to do. That announcement provoked immediate pushback, but highlighted the groundwork being laid for the next big leap in quantum computing.

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Yet for every advance, there are setbacks. In 2019, several countries officially lost a hard-earned public health achievement — the elimination of measles, defined as a year without continuously spreading infections. The United States racked up its most measles cases since achieving elimination in 2000, but managed to just barely hold on to that status: An aggressive public health campaign ended one outbreak just before its one-year anniversary.

Many other records we never wanted to see were set in 2019; temperatures spiked to all-time highs in hundreds of places in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to deadly heat waves, fires and droughts. Scientists have been warning of looming catastrophes fueled by climate change for years. Perhaps 2019 will be remembered as the year that message finally caught fire with the public. Climate protests, many led by teen activists, spread globally to include millions of people. Only time will tell if the rising tide of people demanding action on climate change will become the turning point we remember in years to come.

— Macon Morehouse, News Director

The Top 10 science stories of 2019

Portrait of a black hole

After more than a decade of work, results from the Event Horizon Telescope stunned the world this year with the first direct image of a black hole’s event horizon, the region beyond which not even light can escape. FULL STORY

Measles resurgence

In 2019, measles sickened more people in the United States than in any year since 1992. Two outbreaks in New York accounted for more than 75 percent of the cases. One of those outbreaks ran almost long enough to strip the United States of its measles elimination status, which it achieved in 2000. FULL STORY

Climate activism

This year, summer temperatures broke hundreds of all-time records, bringing unprecedented melting to Greenland and helping to fuel wildfires that raged across the Arctic. A stark report warned of a bleak future for Earth’s oceans and frozen regions. But climate scientists say that’s not 2019’s only takeaway: This year also saw record-breaking waves of climate activism. FULL STORY

Dangers of vaping

E-cigarettes have enjoyed a reputation of being relatively harmless, at least among the public. But that began to change in 2019, when the first reported lung injuries and deaths linked to vaping provided a stark corrective. FULL STORY

Denisovan discoveries

Discoveries reported in 2019 brought an ancient group of hominids called Denisovans into focus — but left plenty of room for interpretation. As fossils accumulate, investigators will grasp how Denisovan anatomy influenced the skeletal makeup of Denisovans’ occasional mating partners, including Homo sapiens. FULL STORY

CRISPR in clinical trials

This year, researchers in the United States began testing the gene editor CRISPR/Cas9 in people, a crucial first step in determining whether the technology can fulfill its medical promise. FULL STORY

Quantum supremacy claim

In October, researchers from Google claimed to have achieved a milestone known as quantum supremacy. But IBM researchers countered that Google hadn’t done anything special. The clash highlights the intense commercial interest in quantum computing, as companies jostle for position at the forefront of the field. FULL STORY

Biodiversity under fire

Some big numbers from nature made news in 2019. They were enough of a shock to get people talking about the dwindling diversity of plants, animals and other life on Earth, and what to do about it. FULL STORY

Return to the moon

After decades with almost no traffic to the moon, space agencies clamored to land probes on Earth’s nearest neighbor in 2019. And the moonshot renaissance is just getting started. FULL STORY

New depression drug

For the first time in decades, a fundamentally new drug became available for people with severe depression. But there are still big questions about the drug’s effectiveness and safety. FULL STORY

Essay The role of science in human life

Essays
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The role of science in human life

Science plays an important role in human life. It's hard to imagine, but some 100 years ago there was no electricity, running water, no telephone, not even a radio in the houses. But who came up with all these inventions? People of science, scientists, inventors. Their work was based on knowledge gained through observations, descriptions, and experiments. It is difficult to imagine the modern achievements of science, this sphere of life has stepped far forward. The development of medicine, space exploration, technological progress - this is only a small part of the achievements of modern science, which is based on knowledge accumulated over the centuries.

There are many sciences. There are sciences that study a person, these are psychology, anatomy, physiology. Others study the world around us, its phenomena: biology, physics, chemistry. Of great importance is the science of the breach - history. It is the foundation of the life of human society. Nowadays, science has penetrated almost all spheres of human life. Almost all professions are associated with it. An example is the work of a doctor. If the doctor does not know how the human body works, he will not be able to help the patient. Science also plays an important role in the work of a lawyer, teacher, engineer, architect, and economist. We constantly use the achievements of science in our lives: TV, the Internet, an airplane.

The development of the country is determined by the development of science, scientific and technological progress. More and more people are engaged in mental work. Thanks to the developed field of science, the welfare of the country is growing. Therefore, countries that pay special attention to research occupy a leading position on the world stage.

A special place is occupied by scientific progress in the field of medicine: humanity has been able to find an "antidote" for many diseases. The problem of organ transplantation is being solved: new organs are grown in laboratories to replace them with those that do not function in the human body.

Thanks to the achievements of science, humanity has mastered almost the entire space of the globe. We live in different latitudes, we have different climatic conditions, the area is distinguished by a variety of relief and natural resources. Mankind has learned to deal with adverse weather conditions, to predict natural disasters: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes. This allows the person to take rescue measures in advance.

We get acquainted with the achievements of science from the earliest years, during school years, modern science forms a person's worldview. This area is closely related to technological progress, which determines the development of society.

Option 2

We rarely think about science and believe that science is the lot of scientists, and ordinary people have nothing to do with it. But is it really so? Is science really not that important to each of us?

It is hard to overestimate the role of scientific progress in our world. And this applies to all spheres of human life. It is very important for medicine. After all, all our pills and medicines, without which we would not be able to recover from any disease, appeared thanks to science. Thanks to her, we now use modern household appliances and various newfangled gadgets. After all, now we can’t even imagine life without a TV, phone or navigator. And all these blessings would not exist if it were not for science. What about space flight and airspace exploration? And how many more important discoveries that have made life easier for a person.

Sciences are directly related to people's lives. What used to be considered fiction is becoming a reality in the modern world thanks to science. For example, when people wrote fairy tales about a flying carpet, they did not even imagine that such an aircraft would actually appear in our lives. Or our great-grandmothers, who rinsed clothes in the river, could they dream of a modern washing machine - an automatic machine? And how has science made life easier for people with disabilities? These are various programs and devices that have brought great benefits. It is sad, of course, that science is not always aimed at doing good deeds. Here I mean the invention of weapons directed against humanity. But this is the harsh truth of life.

It is very pleasing that humanity does not stop there, and science is constantly moving forward. Modern science, genetics, for example, helps people to study diseases and the nature of their occurrence. She has helped many people recover from those diseases that were previously considered incurable. Or, for example, how many couples have become happy parents thanks to scientists such as reproductive specialists. Science also helps to avoid possible environmental disasters.

Drawing a conclusion, we can say with confidence that science plays a very important role in the life of every person. It affects both the inner world of a person and the way of life, social and domestic aspects of life. Science is needed both for all mankind and for each person individually.

Other works:

← Is the Internet good or evil?

Several interesting essays

Essay on Science

Best essays and paraphrases

Essays
Pro technology
Science

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov once said that science is the most necessary and important part of the life of any person. It is difficult to unequivocally agree or refute this statement, because science is indeed an important aspect in the life of every person. However, it would be wrong to highlight only it, while forgetting about other equally important areas. Science makes our lives more convenient by inventing items that improve the quality of life, helps to increase life expectancy, but this does not mean that it is the only important area of human life.

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev discusses the problem of the importance of science and other aspects of life in his story "Fathers and Sons". In it, one of the main characters Evgeny Bazarov is fond of natural sciences, in the future he wants to become a doctor. Bazarov, having fallen in love with science, began to reject other areas of life, confidently believing that people of science are many times better than the same poets or writers. However, it was he who contracted typhus while dissecting frogs. Science can be both a gift and a punishment.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote about the same problem in his novel Heart of a Dog. This work tells about Professor Preobrazhensky, a man who, after conducting many experiments, made a breakthrough in science. In the course of one of the experiments, he transplanted the pituitary gland and endocrine glands of a deceased drunkard into a dog named Sharik. And so, after this experience, the dog not only survived, but also completely changed, adopting all the negative features of the man whose biological materials were transplanted to him. Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov, as they now began to call the dog, became a narcissistic, ill-mannered, not tactful and unscrupulous person. After a series of misdeeds, the professor makes a difficult but correct decision and returns the dog to its original state. Whatever miracles a person would like to do, one must always remember important postulates, one of them is that the nature of a being cannot be changed. The professor, in pursuit of the new and the unknown, forgot about this and made a mistake.

Summing up, we can say that science is important in our lives. However, it cannot be said that it is right to live and develop in only one direction. You can be a highly qualified specialist and an absolutely uninteresting person. It is important to read, watch and get involved in everything in order to be an erudite and interesting conversationalist. In addition, it is the interaction of several areas that generates incredible scientific discoveries, which proves the importance of studying everything, without highlighting one thing.

With literature examples

Science occupies a significant place in human activity. It's hard to imagine the world without her. Advances in technology are growing, new tools are being developed by thousands of minds to help people in everyday life. All thanks to the study, the desire to know. Therefore, it is necessary to study. The path to useful discovery lies through the study of various things. The importance of science was once emphasized by Chekhov, who said that it is possible to defeat oneself and even nature with it.

Turgenev, through the work “Fathers and Sons”, showed readers a person who was passionate about science. The hero Yevgeny Bazarov, pursuing the goal of becoming a doctor, devotes a lot of time to studying scientific disciplines. Against the background of these most important disciplines, he is convinced that writers and poets are senselessly immersed in creativity. It would be better if they directed the energy in the right direction! But the hero's hobbies harm his health: he becomes infected with typhus because of the frogs. So what is it?

Science - in simple terms - the comprehension of the patterns that the cosmos, man obeys. This is a special area of activity that brings great benefits to people. But sometimes it does harm. History knows many discoveries that have changed people's lives for the worse. Deep knowledge can be used to create destructive weapons or crowd control. One step of scientists sometimes costs a thousand lives...

The negative side of the subject is shown in Bulgakov's novel Heart of a Dog. The main character, Professor Preobrazhensky, while working on experiments, transplanted the pituitary gland of a deceased drunkard into a dog. But the deed was not without negative consequences: the dog Sharik, having taken the form of a man, absorbed the worst qualities of the donor. Yesterday's dog was named - Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov. The professor, observing the disgusting behavior of the Polygraph, decides to perform a new operation - Sharikov again becomes a four-legged creature. In the work, the author addresses people who have control levers in some areas of life, with a warning: it is important to weigh each step, think about the possible consequences, and only then make a decision.

As a result, a logical conclusion is formed: a person must develop, broaden his horizons, learn new things, desire progress. But it must be remembered that man is not God. No one gave the right to smart people to cripple the fate of others for the sake of higher goals. No one gave the right to smart people to dispose of a layer of society that is not inclined to the desire to learn. Love and compassion are above science. Every action has consequences.

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