Is Storytelling Adaptable to the Human Mind?

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This kind of engagement that we're talking about involves the cognition of thinking about and simulating the events that are going on in the story. It typically involves emotionally responding so sympathizing with the characters or identifying with them reacting to the events that happen. Do you know of any research into like maybe how This came to be our default method of communication? There's some suggestion that narrative is sort of a more sophisticated way of using these kind of simulation abilities That developed along with this kind of cognitive complexity of remembering and projecting.

In this episode we discuss the power of narratives to affect our beliefs and behaviors with Melanie C. Green, a psychologist who studies the persuasive power of fiction.

According to Nielsen, the TV ratings company, the average person in the United States watches about 34 hours of television a week. That’s 73 days a year. Over the course of a lifetime, the average American can expect to spend a full decade lost in the trance spell that only powerful narratives can cast over the human mind.

What is the power of all the stories we consume through television? What about movies and books and comics and video games and everything else? How does it affect our beliefs and behaviors?

We discuss all of that and more with Melanie C. Green who is a social psychologist who developed the transportation into a narrative worlds theory that helps explain total story immersion and how it translates into influence over our real-world behaviors. Green is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. You can find her on Twitter using the handle @NarrProf or her website.

After the interview I eat some chocolate orange cherry cookies sent in by Elliot Jones and then discuss how photographs can either enhance or dampen your memory depending on how you use them.

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