Future of StoryTelling: Paul Zak
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.พ. 2013
- See all the FoST films here: • Future of StoryTelling...
The emotionally charged story recounted at the beginning Dr. Paul Zak's film-of a terminally ill two-year-old named Ben and his father-offers a simple yet remarkable case study in how the human brain responds to effective storytelling. As part of his study, Dr. Zak, a founding pioneer in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, closely monitored the neural activity of hundreds of people who viewed Ben's story. What he discovered is that even the simplest narrative, if it is highly engaging and follows the classic dramatic arc outlined by the German playwright Gustav Freytag, can evoke powerful empathic responses associated with specific neurochemicals, namely cortisol and oxytocin. Those brain responses, in turn, can translate readily into concrete action-in the case of Dr. Zak's study subjects, generous donations to charity and even monetary gifts to fellow participants. By contrast, stories that fail to follow the dramatic arc of rising action/climax/denouement-no matter how outwardly happy or pleasant those stories may be-elicit little if any emotional or chemical response, and correspond to a similar absence of action. Dr. Zak's conclusions hold profound implications for the role of storytelling in a vast range of professional and public milieus.
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Very Powerful, it shows the greatness (in this a crazy world) of human nature.
This basically summarizes most of my media psychology classes. Great stuff.
How beautiful! Thanks so much for the work you are doing in this area.
This is why the use of drama and story telling is so impactful.
thank you guys. the video was very interesting and helpful!
more! great job, great video
brain chemistry might be able to be altered through story arc, but what about stories with unexpected, surprising arcs, maybe absurd or counter-intuitive, I bet they still generate chemical reactions and I bet they're different ones. The arc might manipulate the brain, but the brain is far more sophisticated than two emotions plottable on a graph. The simple image of say a discarded woman's shoe on the sidewalk is likely to fire your brain with 5-10 associations to that image virtually simultaneously. Story arcs feed you one at a time, two at best. We need more interesting stories to feed our brains, ones that stretch it, rather than simplistic and manipulative ones. Otherwise we short change our emotional and chemical complexity.
Fascinating and powerful
Fantastic .thanks ..
Charles, this is a game changer. Thank you for sharing this. I would love to attend the 2013 Summit. I left my email at your website. Great job. Thanks!!!!
pure gold
Ditto... Fascinating.
Fascinating.
Sensacional como nosso cérebro trabalha, syn! #fatorsyn!
I really like this video
*A perfect reason you need to appeal to emotions through every step of the marketing funnel*
That sorry made me cry, but I ain't giving a dime to any charity until I know exactly how effective it is/friendly to analysis by an economist.
uhhhh is that the kirby ferguson from EVERYTHING IS A REMIX
Very very interesting, but the story they used didn't follow the dramatic arc... did it? I didn't detect any climax in it.
5:25 uplifted motivated and connected are consequences of story
Would you be able to share the story of Ben and his father as a script? I'd like to break it down into the dramatic structure and analyze it. Thank you very much.
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That people donate is lovely. But the idea that this is the "future" of storytelling again excludes so many.Speaking of 19th Freytag or Freitag without mentioning what a shit he was, hated Poles and Jews, is, talk about, an incomplete story.And he is a rehash of Aristotle who took Horace from 3 part to 5 part story. And the source of this story structure is one meant for catharsis. The viewer/listener feels better, and can then ignore suffering.
Yep, it makes people donate, and that's good, we need to know that! But it is not a structure that either helps make inclusion into work for radical change, nor a story structure that is applicable for so many people.That rise and fall of tension, that structure really based in male ejaculation, if you ask me, does not make for story structure that applies, IMHO, to people, neighborhoods, groups, nations, individuals in tough and traumatic circumstances--where there is not a rise and fall of tension.What of those born into terrible pressures, tensions?
What of those whose circumstances make it so there is constant tension? Shall we not tell those stories because again it is suggested that this 5 part up down is the universal story structure? It's great for movies when I need to rest, need to know it will be ok. It does not reflect not only the lives of so many, but on a planet existentially challenged, I believe we need to understand other ways of writing stories that hold this sense of constant and perhaps increasing tension.
Many groups obviously already know that state of being. I guess it infuriates me a bit, not that this form is still used, but that it is put forward as universal, when it might be said to be exclusionary, obscuring, and clearly not applicable to many people's stories. Look at a map of people's blood pressures. You'll see where there is dangerously high blood pressure. It is not where the tension in people's stories rise and fall, but continue.
For instance:
"Exposure to trauma, including childhood abuse (Riley et al., 2010) and combat (Granadoet al., 2009), has been associated with increased hypertension risk."
"Current research on health disparities and high blood pressure: African American and Hispanic adults in the United States have a higher prevalence of high blood pressure than other racial and ethnic groups."
This approach to story as universal is more than incorrect. It's harmful, and supports some of the worst exclusions from the world of story and how to tell it, shape it.
It's why, as a writer and teacher of creative writer, story whether fiction or memoir, I work with organic forms--helping writers develop the structure that fits their story.
It's brilliantly diverse....
DARPA wanted to find out if people could be made to give money after watching of film. Cute. I watched the film and felt empathy for the father. Not because he was going to loose his son, but because he's not living in the moment.
This is fairly trivial.
If you altered the order of the arc, in all its permutation and measured the difference in response, then you might have something over which to justify your inane conclussions
I love this, but I have better.
it's kinda sad to know that empathy is just another chemical function. that altruism is simply an evolutionary mechanism for survival. but hey, if the story is good tell it.
Study Buddhas teachings about death and karma and hopefully you'll begin to understand what's really going on.
I honestly find the story to be quite banal and forgettable, and the claim of universal narrative structure is a recipe for glorification of the pastiche along with the wholesale destruction of creativity, experimentation, freedom of thought. I ask you this, Why does the US military (DARPA) fund research to change behavior through brain chemistry? That would be a form of mind control. Surely we should examine this "non-dit". This omission is a narrative choice, much like the choice of subject matter: death, something so seemingly depoliticized, natural, as though charity for terminally ill people was somehow remarkable in any way, shape, or form. Charity is completely ineffective; the 85 richest people in the world have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity!! Of course a narrative can produce affects, why do you even need the military-academic industrial complex to tell you this?! People have known this for thousands of years! Why not have a narrative that builds empathy for people who are truly oppressed, for something we can actually do something about? Why didn't they make a story about an Afghan boy and his father, or a Palestinian, or something which the funding entity of the research is implicated in? The answer is obvious.
This is so wrong information about telling stories.
there doesn't seem to be a real connection between the story arc and the response, there IS a connection between distress, attention and empathy, but it might as well just be stressing and empathic images without any other connection, I hope they didn't waste too much money on this pseudo science.