How People are Influenced by Stories

“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

With that opening sentence from the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, millions of children and adults have been hooked into the story world of Harry Potter.

Stories are like breathing. You breathe between 17,000 and 30,000 times a day. In fact, you breathe so much that you don’t realize anymore that you’re breathing.

Stories are like that. Stories are important to how people communicate and how the brain works; they’re so integral to everyday life that people don’t even realize it. If you think you’re a designer and not a storyteller, think again. If you want to grab people’s attention, get them to respond, and design an experience, you should be telling stories. You probably are already telling stories. But how good are your stories?

What if you were listening to me give a presentation on the same topic? I’m giving you facts and figures, but not telling a story. The fMRI would again show that Wernicke’s area is active, since there are words, and now your auditory cortex would be active as well, because you’re listening to me speak.

But what if, during the presentation, I started telling you a story about a family in South America that’s being affected by changes in the global economy—a story about the father going to work in a foreign country to earn enough for the family, and the mother having to drive 100 kilometers for health care. What’s going on in your brain now? Wernicke’s area would be active again, as well as the auditory cortex, but now there would be more activity. If, in my story, I described the sharp smell of the pine forest high in the Andes where this family lives, the olfactory sensory areas of the brain would be active as though you were smelling the forest. If I described the mother driving over rutted, muddy roads, with the vehicle careening from side to side, your motor cortex would be lighting up as though you were driving on a bumpy road. And if I started talking about the devastation the family felt when their young son died before he could get medical treatment, then the empathy areas of the brain would be active.

Stories evoke a simulation of the event. Your brain reacts to the story as if you were in the story, and having the experience.

This means that you’re literally using more of your brain when you listen to a story. And because you’re having a richer brain event, you enjoy the experience more, you understand the information more deeply, and you retain it longer.

If the story is tense, then the hormone cortisol will be released (cortisol modulates stress). If the story is heartwarming, then oxytocin is released (oxytocin makes people feel bonded to others). If the story has a happy ending, then dopamine is released (dopamine makes people feel optimistic and seek action).

That’s a narrow view of design. I used to hear people who design websites say that they weren’t responsible for the content of the website—just the design. Or they weren’t responsible for picking out the photos, just for preparing and placing them on the page. As a designer, you’re active in decisions about the product. You may not have the final say, but you’re part of the team. Just as you have to pay attention to and be involved with decisions about interaction, visual design, and content, you need to be involved in decisions about stories, too.

Stories are so important as a medium that if you want to design a compelling product and have people use it, you have to at least influence the use of stories and the way they’re told.

If you don’t create stories yourself then, at the very least, you can be an advocate for effective stories.

This is the opening line to a video that Paul Zak (author of The Moral Molecule) used to research the relationship between stories and brain chemicals.

Zak ran experiments with the video. The video is a true story about a 2-year-old boy who was dying of brain cancer. In the video, Ben’s father talks about his son. He says that Ben felt better after his chemotherapy and so was often playing happily, but that he (the father) had a difficult time being joyful even when Ben was, because he knew that Ben would die within a few months as a result of his brain tumor.

Zak found that when people watched the video they experienced two emotions: first, distress, and then later, empathy. He took blood samples before and after people watched the video. He found that when people felt distress they released cortisol, and when they felt empathy they released oxytocin. Zak then gave people a chance to share money with a stranger in the lab or to donate money to a charity that helped children who were ill. In both cases, the more cortisol and oxytocin people had released, the more money they donated.

Zak concluded, “The narrative (story) is changing behavior by changing brain chemistry.”

In another experiment, Zak used the same video and added measurements of heart rate, skin conductance, and respiration. He could predict who would give money based on these measurements. (These new measurements allowed him to study people without having to take blood.)

Zak has examined stories in detail. His research shows that stories that follow the traditional “dramatic arc” are the stories that cause the release of the brain chemicals. In his research, Zak repeated the experiment using a different video of Ben and his father. This video showed Ben and his father at the zoo. It did not have a dramatic arc and did not elicit brain chemical release. Zak also found that the story without the dramatic arc did not hold people’s attention.

The dramatic arc Zak refers to comes from Gustav Freytag, a nineteenth-century German playwright and novelist. Freytag studied plays and stories from the Greeks and Shakespeare through to stories from his own time. According to Freytag, an effective story is divided into the five parts shown in Figure 31.1.

1. Exposition—The exposition is the introduction. It sets the time and place, the protagonist or hero, the antagonist or villain, other characters, and the basic conflict of the story.

2. Rising action—The rising action is where the conflict that was introduced during the exposition starts to grow. Tension increases. The initial conflict becomes more complicated.

3. Climax—The climax is the turning point. At the climax, the protagonist has a change of fate. If it’s a comedy, then before the climax things were not going well for the protagonist, but after the climax things look up. If it’s a tragedy, then the opposite happens. Things get worse for the protagonist. The climax is the highest point in the arc.

4. Falling action—After the climax, it may seem that everything is done, but that’s actually not true. This is the last point of suspense. Unexpected things may still happen, so the outcome that the audience thought was set during the climax may or not occur.

5. Denouement—People tend to call the last part of the arc the conclusion, but Freytag called it the denouement. This is a French word referring to an unraveling or untying of a knot. The protagonist either comes out on top (comedy) or the antagonist does (tragedy).

When people watch or hear a story that contains this dramatic arc structure (even if it’s a very short story, such as a testimonial on a website), their brains will release cortisol during the rising action and climax, and oxytocin during the falling action and denouement.

1. The hero is living in his ordinary world, but then he receives a message that calls him to adventure and a higher purpose.

2. He often is reluctant to go on the adventure.

3. He has an encounter with someone wise who encourages him to take the first step.

4. He faces some kind of test.

5. He encounters helpers.

6. He has to undergo a harrowing ordeal.

7. He is successful and brings back some kind of treasure.

8. He is transformed and brings the treasure to the rest of the world.

The Harry Potter books contain many examples of the hero’s story. Luke Skywalker’s storyline in the Star Wars movies is an example of a hero’s story. (George Lucas specifically cites Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces as critical influences.) Many TED talks are hero stories.

1. Overcoming a monster—The protagonist has to defeat an antagonist (monster) who is threatening the protagonist’s homeland (for example, Star Wars).

2. Rags to riches—The protagonist is poor and suddenly becomes wealthy with money, power, and/or a mate. The protagonist loses it all, but then grows as a person and gets the important riches back (for example, Cinderella).

3. The quest—The protagonist and friends set out to get something important, face lots of challenges along the way, and eventually are triumphant (for example, The Lord of the Rings).

4. Voyage and return—The protagonist goes to a foreign place, makes it through many dangerous situations, and comes back without anything of value, except a personal transformation (for example, The Chronicles of Narnia).

5. Comedy—The protagonist is somewhat of a fool and gets into lots of embarrassing situations and near-disasters, but in the end triumphs over all the adversities and finds happiness (for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

6. Tragedy—There may be a protagonist or an antagonist. He or she ends up with a tragic ending/death. He or she may learn from the troubles encountered along the way, but not enough to be redeemed in this life (for example, Macbeth).

7. Rebirth—Instead of a protagonist, there’s an antagonist. He or she learns and is redeemed over the course of the story (for example, Beauty and the Beast).

These common plots resonate with people. When a story follows one of these plots, people can easily understand the story and are more likely to become involved.

In the dramatic arc discussed earlier in this chapter, the second part of the arc (after the exposition) is rising action. The rising action contains tension. When there’s tension, people pay attention. The stories that designers use (for example, a story from a customer at a website, or a video) are often short. If the story is short, then you have to build the tension very quickly to grab attention.

As shown in Figure 32.1, tension in a story causes the brain to release cortisol. This makes people pay attention. If people sustain attention long enough, then they begin to identify with the characters in the story. This will lead to oxytocin release, which then leads to empathy.

People who study stories, or “narratives,” call this identification with the characters “transportation.”

Transportation is an actual physical reaction. When people start to identify with the characters, they smile when the characters are happy, and cry when the characters are sad. People’s brains react as though they themselves were in the story. The shorter the story, the simpler and more clear the main character’s actions need to be in order to activate transportation.

Storyboards are a form of story even though they’re not a narrative. They’re like a very short graphic novel.

If you want your audience to buy into your plan or design, then treat your storyboard like a story. Build in tension to grab and hold the audience’s attention. In the storyboard, show the problem, danger, or hope of the target audience, build the tension quickly, and then resolve it with your design.

People like to be consistent with their self-stories. So if I feel that I’m someone who’s very technology savvy, I’ll want to stay consistent with that. In fact, it will make me uncomfortable if I come across a situation in which it seems like I’m not technology savvy. I won’t like that, because it doesn’t fit my self-story. These self-stories have a powerful influence on the decisions people make and the actions they take.

As a designer, you can connect with your audience on a deeper level if you know their self-story. For example, let’s say my self-story is that I’m an expert at video equipment. If I come to your website and it seems that the website is for people who are new to video technology, then I may quickly decide that your website is not for me. I will want to stay consistent with my self-story. I’ll filter out anything that doesn’t fit with my self-story.

One of the reasons that designers research and document personas is to understand the self-stories of the target audience and to be able to design to fit those self-stories. If you know who your target audience is, then you can craft your message to speak to that audience. When you craft the message to speak to that target audience, you’re tapping into their self-story.

Let’s say you’re designing an app to encourage people to sign up for a walk/run event to raise money for a charity. How you promote the event, the wording you use, even the wording on the button that people click on to register for the event all depends on what self-story you’re going to tap into. For example, if the target audience’s self-story is, “I’m someone who cares about helping people who need it,” then you’ll want to use messaging about helping people. The button to register might say, “Sign me up to help.”

If the target audiences’ self-story is, “I’m someone who likes to stay fit,” then you’ll want to use messaging about staying fit. The button might say, “I’m ready to run the 5K.” Shaping the wording of text and buttons to fit a self-story makes it more likely that the person reading it will take action.

The answer is yes, but you have to start small.

My husband used Apple computers at his job (at a newspaper), and he and I would have “Apple/PC” wars. I swore I would “never buy an Apple product.” That’s a pretty strong self-story.

When MP3 players first came on the market, they were poorly designed and not very usable. Then Apple introduced the iPod. My children really wanted an iPod. But if I bought them an iPod, I was breaking my promise to myself. It would be inconsistent with my self-story.

On the other hand, I wanted to be a fun parent and get my children the latest cool gadget. So I broke with my self-story and bought them each an iPod.

That was a small step, not in alignment with my self-story. But it was small. I could justify it. It caused me a little bit of discomfort, but not too much. When people take a small action that goes against an active self-story, it causes conflict. It has to be a small action, or else people are unlikely to take it. If it’s small enough and people take the action, they’ve now introduced a crack in their self-story.

This was a larger step. I wasn’t buying this for my children. It was for me. The only reason I was willing to take that step was that I had already taken the first step of buying an Apple product at all. Now buying another iPod was actually consistent with the previous action.

I could still rationalize that this iPod purchase for me didn’t mean that I was an Apple person. It was just an iPod. I was still a PC person.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but buying that iPod for me widened the crack in my self-story and allowed me to continue taking actions that were now consistent with a new, developing self-story. I was a person who was open to new, cooler gadgets. I was a person who could adjust to the latest “thing.” I was a person who bought Apple products.

Without realizing what was happening, I started taking actions consistent with the self-story of someone who buys Apple products. When my phone needed replacing, I bought an iPhone. When my laptop needed replacing, I bought a MacBook Pro. Eventually I bought everything Apple, including, more iPods, iPads, a Mac desktop, and an Apple TV.

I had totally changed my self-story, but it all started with one little action that was inconsistent with the existing self-story.

Interestingly, I think the self-story might change again. I’ve become enamored with my son’s large-size smartphone (“phablet”). But it’s an Android product. Am I going to change my self-story to be a Google person instead of an Apple person? My team at work has me using Google docs instead of Mac software. Is that the new crack? I find that I’m not planning on buying an Apple watch. I’m thinking that it’s time to upgrade my phone to an Android product.

For example, let’s say that your company creates SaaS (software as a service) accounting software for small businesses. Your software runs in the cloud. But your target audience has a self-story of “I’m not the kind of person who uses the cloud. I’m not convinced my data is secure that way. If I’m going to use software for my small business, I want it to be on my computer.” How will you get them to buy your SaaS product?

You’ll need to ask for a small commitment first, and then a series of small commitments. For example, try asking them to download a free trial version of just one of your products first, and then follow that with a reduced rate, three-month subscription for the same product, and after that a free trial of another product. Once they’ve made one or two small commitments that start to change their self-story, they’ll be more likely to continue using the product and to commit to a full year’s subscription of more than one product.

But then she watches a short video about the XYZ email marketing service, which claims that when you create an email campaign for potential customers, you can greatly increase your sales. Maryanne wonders if she could increase her sales this way.

The XYZ company offers a free 30-day trial, so she decides to try it out. That’s a slight shift in Maryanne’s self-story. She can’t really say that she’s not a business or marketing person if she uses an email marketing service. Maybe she’s an arts and crafts person who is also savvy about marketing. If she signs up for the trial and doesn’t tell anyone, then the shift in her self-story might stay very small.

But what if she not only signs up for the free trial, but she clicks the “Share” button and shares on her Facebook page that she has signed up for the XYZ email marketing service. That’s a form of a public commitment. Unconsciously this will shift her self-story more. The public commitment about the action makes the effect of the action on her self-story stronger than if there were no public commitment.

Taking an action that no one else knows about results in less commitment and will lead to less long-term self-story change than an action that others see.

As an example, let’s say that you work for a hotel chain. When customers stay at the hotel, you send them an email with a link to an online survey about their stay. This survey is a form of public commitment. If they rate your hotel well, then they’ve made a public commitment that they are a supporter. Be sure to ask how likely they’d be to stay at your hotel again. A survey can be a way for you to get data and feedback about your products and services, but it’s also a way to get people to publicly commit. Even if you’re the only one who sees the survey result, when people fill out the survey form they will feel that they have made a public commitment, and this will strengthen their self-story that they are a fan of your brand.

You can even send a survey to people who are not yet your customers. If you ask them about their perceptions of your organization, products, or services, and they give positive responses, then they’ve just committed publicly and will be more open to dealing with you in the future.

The more public people’s commitment, the more it will strengthen their self-story—and the more it will affect their current and future behavior. Completing an anonymous survey is better than no commitment at all, but giving a testimonial or recommendation, or writing a review that’s posted online, is an even stronger show of commitment.

When people give a recommendation, testimonial, or a written review, they’re strengthening a self-story that says, “I am a person who believes in this product,” or “I am a person who donates to this organization,” or “I am a person who buys from this company.”

Reviews act on others as a form of social validation, but they also act on the self as a form of commitment. If people write a positive review, they’ll want to stay consistent, and that means they’ll take more action to interact with the site, the company, the organization. If you want to build commitment to your brand, your company, or a product, then make sure you give your audience the opportunity to write a review.

When people write a new story that describes who they are, why they behave as they do, and how they relate to others, they will, consciously and unconsciously, start to make decisions and act in ways that are consistent with that story.

But what if you can’t get someone to stop, think, and write out a new story? Does that mean that you can’t use the powerful effect of stories? Luckily, the answer is no. Even if you can’t get people to sit down and write out a new story, you can provide a story for them, and that’s almost as good.

Wilson explains how he used story-prompting to help college students stay in school, get better grades, and work harder in their courses. He identified first-year college students who were not doing well. These students were in what he calls a “self-defeating cycle.” The students were getting low grades on one or more tests, and had started thinking things like, “I’m in over my head,” or “Maybe I don’t belong at this college,” or “I’m not smart enough.” These thoughts created a new story that resulted in behavior that fit, such as not studying and skipping classes. This, of course, resulted in more low grades, reaffirming the story that the students couldn’t be successful. Wilson contrasts this with students who might also get a poor grade, but instead of believing the “I’m not smart enough” story, they believe a more hopeful story, such as “This course is harder than I thought it would be,” or “I guess my high school work didn’t prepare me well enough for this class,” or “I’m going to have to work harder, study more, maybe get a tutor.” These students’ behavior would lead to more studying and getting more help, and therefore better grades.

Wilson’s question was whether he could prompt a new story for the “self-defeating” students, even without having them explicitly write a new story themselves. Was there anything he could do to help them switch to a story that was more like the students who reacted to the poor grade by working harder?

Wilson had the students participate in an experiment. They thought they were being asked to take a survey of first-year students’ attitudes about college life. Wilson told them that they’d see the results from earlier surveys of older students, so they would know what kind of questions would be on their survey. In actuality, Wilson was showing them the previous survey results in order to prompt them with a new story.

The participants then saw the survey results of these older students that showed that many of the students had problems with grades during their first year, but that their grades improved over time. The participants read statements such as “67 percent said their freshman grades were lower than they had anticipated; 62 percent of the students said their GPA had improved significantly from the first semester of their freshman year to their upper-class years.” (This data was true, from actual earlier surveys.) To make sure that the new “story” was clear, the participants also watched video interviews of four older students who gave the same messages. The students in the videos talked about their majors, their hometowns, and career plans and then talked about their GPAs for the first semester of their first year, the second semester of the first year, and the most recent completed semester. All the students in the video interviews talked about their grades steadily increasing over time.

Altogether the participants spent 30 minutes hearing from other students who had problems with low grades, but then improved their grades. Wilson didn’t do anything else. He didn’t counsel them, teach them study habits, or give them any other help. The participants didn’t know that the purpose of the study was to improve their grades. What Wilson hoped was that he had prompted a new story, even if the participants were unaware of it. He hoped to prompt a story such as, “Maybe it’s not hopeless. Maybe I’m like those other students. They tried harder and were able to raise their grades.”

The story-prompting worked. Wilson reports that the participants achieved better grades in the following year than a randomly assigned control group who did not get the story prompting. The participants were also less likely to drop out of college. Imagine: 30 minutes of reading and watching videos about other people’s stories resulted in students working harder, improving their grades, and staying in school.