The Power of Stories
Who doesn’t love a great story? We consume stories on a regular basis in every form imaginable: movies, books, songs, video games, operas, and theatrical plays among many others. Individuals connect to stories and therefore remember the heart or point of the story. We remember information within the context of story. Without a context the information becomes dry, tasteless, unmemorable.
But have you ever given a second thought to the power of stories to shape your belief system? Do you know why you believe what you believe? Do you know how you came to believe what you believe?
The Trojan Horse
When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless….
The central metaphor of Tell to Win [by Peter Guber] is the Trojan Horse. You know the back story: After a decade of gory stalemate at Troy, the ancient Greeks decided they would never take Troy by force, so they would take it by guile. They pretended to sail home, leaving behind a massive wooden horse, ostensibly as an offering to the gods. The happy Trojans dragged the gift inside the city walls. But the horse was full of Greek warriors, who emerged in the night to kill, burn, and rape.
Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses. The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the teller’s agenda. A story is a trick for sneaking a message into the fortified citadel of the human mind.
Guber’s book is relentlessly optimistic about the power of story to persuade. But as the bloody metaphor of the Trojan Horse suggests, story is a tool that can be used for good or ill. Like fire, it can be used to warm a city or to burn it down. Guber understands this, but he emphasizes story’s ability to bring on change for the better. His book is about people who tell good stories to overcome resistance, usually for laudable reasons. But, approached from a slightly different angle, Tell to Win is a book is about highly capable, experienced professionals suckering for story over and over (and over) again.
So there are two big lessons to take from Guber’s book and from the new science of storytelling. First, storytelling is a uniquely powerful form of persuasive jujitsu. Second, in a world full of black belt storytellers, we had all better start training our defenses. Master storytellers want us drunk on emotion so we will lose track of rational considerations, relax our skepticism, and yield to their agenda. Yes, we need to tell to win, but it’s just as important to learn to see the tell coming–and to steel ourselves against it.” -Jonathan Gottschall The Storytelling Animal
The Power of Media
Just the other night my husband and I were in conversation with some friends over dinner and the topic of conversation was about the power of films and music to influence and affect us. One of my friends, to my surprise shared how he refused to watch sitcoms or any show with a laugh track. He felt that it was a subtle form of psychological manipulation and he was not comfortable with being manipulated in any way. Although I can’t say that I have the same reservations about sitcoms or laugh tracks I was impressed by my friend’s awareness of the power of media and psychological inference and my respect for him increased.
I have made similar deliberate and discriminating decisions through the years to not watch or listen to certain things and essentially trained my defenses like Guber writes about in his book. Many of my friends and peers have laughed and scoffed at those decisions….But, I believe that creating a strong defense has also given me an edge as a story teller and communicator. It’s amazing what you will see and hear when you become mindful and aware of what others are oblivious to.
