[MUSIC]
So I'm very happy to introduce to you,
Kendall Haven.
From West Point,
to a degree in oceanography,
to becoming a master storyteller, he's had
an opportunity to understand how people
respond to stories and to study, in fact,
to do some of the science of storytelling.
And he's going to talk tonight
about your brain on stories.
So, Kendall Haven.
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> Thank you.
Yes.
Your Brain On Story.
And especially what I want to talk
about are some of the, the mechanisms
in your brain that seem
to control participation,
engagement, influence and link them
to very specific elements in story,
which then makes the neural
study practical.
33 years ago when I dropped out of
from Lawrence Berkeley Lab in
a career in science research, and
became a full-time storyteller and joined
the National Storytelling Movement and
the national, the Professional
Storytelling Association, there were
a couple of questions
that plagued the group.
We knew that people,
are engaged by stories.
We knew that they are compelled
to listen to stories.
But we didn't know why.
We didn't know why they were engaged.
We don't know why that stories have
such a profound effect on people.
We didn't know why it is that human
beings are so willing to pay,
with their attention,
to absorb and retain stories.
Because I was the first
storyteller in this country to,
to be a professional storyteller
with a background in science,
I instantly got dumped into
the position of controlling and
managing the effort of the National
Storytelling Association to research
those, the science of story aspects,
which I've now been in charge of for
a little over a quarter century,
with absolutely no budget.
So it was getting the storytellers
to isolate certain,
control certain aspects of
a performance story and, and
then be able to quiz story members
audience members afterwards.
The problem that storytellers
have always had is
that we could never look
inside of the brain.
So we had to rely on only those
measures of a story that could be
reflected in the outward expression,
the physical expression, of an audience.
And that was a very hard limit,
to treat the brain as a black box.
In the last 15 years,
neuroscientists have done
a wonderful job of parsing open
the brain and watching how it functions.
The problem that they typically have
faced is that there is a tendency for
them to treat story like a black box.
That is to say,
as a fixed static stimuli for the brain.
A few years back, Department of Defense
used your tax dollars very wisely and
started a large program in looking
at how stories exert influence.
It was 47 neuroscientists and
me In, in on the program.
And my part of it was to try to bridge
between and merge the science of story,
as defined by 1,500 years
of very nuanced and
detailed research into how stories work,
and the emerging field of neuroscience,
which works on totally
different time scales.
Vocabulary, concepts and measurements.
That's what I want to talk about tonight.
The lab setup for
the experiment that, that,
that I really am here to talk about,
a 24 channel EEG lab,
eight audience members at a time,
IR and video cameras,
cardio monitors,
skin galvanic response monitors and
periodic oxytocin and
dopamine swabs during and after a story.
Pre-interviews, post interviews, and
then one month later interviews, and
three-month later interviews
to look at story retention and
how stories, what stories were
retained and how they're recalled, and
how the recollection of
the story was affected by time.
Now, the center of this work
was look at four major concepts
that really control how an individual
decides to participate in a story.
And the first of those is engagement.
There was, it turns out there's a lot of
disagreement about what engagement is and
how to measure engagement.
And we spent a fair amount of time working
with audiences in, in, in the lab and the,
finally settled on the idea that
engagement has an emotional component.
Information alone will never
fully engage an audience.
They have to, they have,
it has to be personal.
And at some level has to have
emotional involvement, so
that we can say engagement is
emotionally laden attention and
that attention is then dedicated mental,
mental focus over time.
The glory, one of the glories of story
structure is that it instantly and
automatically engages the listener at
an emotional level, so that it allows for
them information to flow in and
fully engage listeners.
Next transportation, which became a,
storytellers voice call this
getting folk into this story.
But, really see what it,
what it is there, it is a measure,
it is a a precursor of empathy and trust,
which are two things of which people
who use stories are most interested.
If people are tran, are able to
transport themselves into the story,
they are prone to then trust the story,
emerse themselves in the story,
treat it as if it were their own.
Relevance.
Also, this isn't our research.
It's, a lot of other
research has shown that if,
if, if you perceive that
something isn't relevant to you,
that gives you permission to totally
ignore it instantly and completely.
And finally, Influence.
That's the biggie.
That's what we're really after.
And that's how we were defining influence,
changing attitudes,
beliefs, knowledge and behavior.
The behavior part is easy to measure.
And that's what neuropsychologist
have always measured in the lab.
Unfortunately, that is not he part
that is most germane to influence.
And we also are able to show that
engagement is an essential gateway to
influence.
If you do not fully hold engagement,
you will not then, influence.
Influence being measure, being
described as stories that are profound,
that are memorable, that touch me,
that move me, that change me.
That's really characteristics of,
of having exerted influence.
Now, what I want to do now
is the bullet headlines.
And because of time constraints,
this is going to be just, this is,
this is like the hors d'oeuvre course,
some bullet headlines of what we were able
to verify from previous research and also
establish in, in this particular program.
This idea was first put out by
some revolutionary biologists, and
has since been pretty much tested to
death by developmental psychologists and,
and, and
other story-related research groups.
For over a 150,000 years
before there was writing,
human beings relied on story as a
structure and storytelling as a process to
communicate essential histories,
values, attitudes, beliefs.
And because we relied on
story both to communicate and
to archive in human memory because
there was no writing, this information,
what it has literally done,
is evolutionary rewired human brains so
that you were born hardwired to make
sense of the world in story terms.
Why are stories so powerful?
Because what we call effective story
structure matches the demands,
the informational demands of the neural
wiring that is hard wired into your head.
And so the question was of course,
well what are the story elements
that if this is true, if we're hard wired
to make sense of the world in story terms,
what are those terms?
What are those story elements
that control this process?
And the thing is what we're able
to show is that you turn story,
you turn information into story before it
gets to your conscious mind, not after.
Information comes through
a sensory organ and
before it gets to the conscious
mind you turn it into story form.
And there is a fixed neural story net
subregion, it's hardwired together,
little group subregions, lower back
part of the brain, th, that light up
as information goes from sensory organ
en route to the conscious brain.
Then we started calling that the neural
story net because we needed a name for
it and and that seemed to be descriptive.
NSN, neural story net.
That net is fixed connection of set wires,
a set, subregions.
The question is, if it works in
story terms, how does it do it,
why does it do it?
And what we are able to show take
from other people's work actually,
developmental psychologists work,
is this concept of a make-sense mandate.
You either make sense of information that
is it comes in to you, or you ignore it.
You're always looking for
a reason to ignore information
that is bombarded into you.
And what we were able to, to verify is
that the job of this make-sense mandate
of doing that, of making sense out
of incoming information has been given to
the neural story net so that you do it in
story forms, hence that initial term that
our minds are hardwired to think in story.
Now what does that mean?
That means the neural story net
has to make sense out of in story
terms incoming information.
Which means that you've distorted.
Easy to demo and I will demo it
a little bit here in just a moment.
That is a very partial list
of the changes that you make
all the time to incoming information.
Notice some of them compl-, you, you
completely reverse some information you
get if it'll help you make it make sense.
You ignore some, you augment some, you
invent some, you reinterpret information.
You do it all the time.
So does every person listening to you
in order to make it make
sense to that individual.
Quick summary before I demo it.
So this neural story net lies between
the outside world and your conscious mind.
We are really homonarrative story animals.
Information that gets to your conscious
mind gets delivered in, in in story form.
That neural story net automatically
distorts incoming information
to make it make sense, if it can't
make it make sense, you ignore it.
So what gets to the conscious mind is not
at all what reached the sensory organs.
In fact, what get delivered to
the conscious mind is a self-created
storied-based version of
the original material distorted
in story form in order
to make it make sense.
Individual participation in the,
in a story is determined by
that self created version.
That's the version of the story
that you immerse yourself in,
that you are transported into and
that you participate with.
It's what gets to the conscious mind.
Quick demo.
I'm going to show you two lines.
Person number one says where's John?
Person number two says, well,
I didn't want to say anything but
I saw a green VW parked
in front of Carol's.
And you can make sense out of that, right?
But you don't do it by
taking it literally.
You start making a whole lot
story-based assumptions.
Person number one talks about a person,
person number two talks about a car.
Doesn't make any sense to you so
you start you,
you assume a link between John and a car.
You assume a link between John and
Carol, usually not necessarily
a particularly nice one.
You take a sentence like I didn't want
to say anything and probably in your
mind instantly totally reverse the infor-,
the, the meaning of that sentence.
And thought to yourself what
that person's really saying is,
boy have I got a hot bit of gossip and
can't wait to give it to you.
You've completely reversed the meaning,
the factual meaning of what was given to
you because you need it to make sense.
You probably assumed that
person number one and
person number two are in the same room
together, or the same location together.
Doesn't say that.
This just could be two random lines
coming down off the NSA feeds where
they monitor all
the communication in the world.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But that doesn't make sense to you,
so you ignore that possibility.
You force it to make sense in
very specific story terms.
Okay, what are those terms?
I'll show you the quick
diagram version of it first.
I, I only show you the diagram version
because I want to take just a moment to
show you the dragon that's the pinnacle
of my life long artistic career.
Three day weekend is
all it took to do that.
A character that we have
been made interested in,
made to care about in some way,
has a goal that is backed by some motive.
Motive is the information
that makes a goal important.
But has not yet reached the goal.
Hence a story.
And is blocked by some combination of
conflicts and problems, obstacles that
engender some level of risk, likelihood of
failure, danger, consequences of failure.
Character must then struggle in some way,
not necessarily physically,
but struggle in some way to get by
problems, conflicts, reach the goal.
That, those are the elements that
that neural story net in your brain
assumes it's going to find and it
doesn't get it from the source material,
it will create them on its own.
And we're able to test that over and
over and over again in the lab.
This is a listing of them.
Characters I'll only mention this one in,
in detail.
Characters the position that populate
the essential character positions,
with an s, plural there's more than one.
Traits, character, the elements that
make the character interesting.
Goal, what the character is after
in the story, not what they get.
Motive, infor, information that
makes that goal important.
Conflicts, problems,
risk and danger, struggles.
Then that's actually the first time
the dimension of plot comes into a story.
And details which are actually
what control transportation.
If I put enough details,
sensory details in a story, you're there.
If I then put character in the story,
you're, you're really, character with goal
and, and sufficient motive that you relate
to, you're really there in the story.
Okay, so
we find that those eight elements in the,
in the lab control engagement,
it varies in the control,
bring on or drop off engagement of an
audience by manipulating those elements.
They also feed the in, information to the,
that neural story net that it requires in
order to make sense out of a story
without excessive distortion and
thereby meet that makes it,
make-sense mandate.
And that's also what starts that emotional
involvement, emotional involvement.
And those are all very easy to control.
Those are amazingly easy to control.
Brings up story influence.
We wanted to say what
are the elements of those,
of those elements which ones
actually seem to control whether
a story is interpreted by the receivers
as being powerful, as being impactful,
as being important, as being moving,
particularly, deeply moving.
And we came up with these.
A character, main character has a goal,
what they're after, backed by some motive.
And if I want you to care about
the character the best way to do it is
to make sure that the character's motive
match those of my intended audience.
Called motive matching.
If I do that you'll start to
care about this character.
And it is the best way we found to
control the the motive matching.
Let me go back a little
bit on the experiment
I forget to talk about the stories.
So given, that,
that lab set up what I was able to
was then create a series of stories,
in which crafted in such a way,
so we could isolate all of
these elements and, and others.
And then we'd create three or
four different versions of each element,
we record it, all of it, so that in the
computer we can dictate which version of
each of these segments would go into the
final story that an audience would get.
So we had 90 some odd versions of
one story and only 75 of another, so
that when an audience came in.
We can vary from audience to audience
one tiny little bit of a story.
Change the motive of a character.
Change the way character
felt at the end of a story.
And watch how that one change would
affect audience after audience.
So we'd be able to isolate story,
story component, and
then the the effect of this of it.
So we got down to these elements that
really then are the ones that control
how a story is going to exert
influence goal, motive, and
antagonist, the embodiment of whatever
all the obstacles that block character.
At some climax scene, we found this
character being critically important.
At the climaxing of the story
some character steps up and
decides how that's going to play out.
It could be the main character,
it could be the antagonist,
it might be some other character in
the story that somebody steps up and
takes on the role of what
we call a hero character.
Assuming the story's going to come
out well for the main character, but
there's some character here that
defines how the story comes out and
that winds up being room for influence
purposes the most important character of
all and then you get the resolution
how the story comes out, and
how the main character feels about it.
But those characters aren't
necessarily the one's you care about.
We found that a couple of questions really
dictated how people reacted to a story.
Who's this story about for me?
Who do I care about in this story?
And we'd have them write all
the characters on likability scales and
such like, to determine that for them.
And then how bad is the ending of
this story for that character and
who do I blame for it?
Story can't end well for
that character, and
then instead of who do I blame for,
who gets the credit.
But if the story ends badly,
we also want to know who had
the power to make it come out
differently and didn't do it.
Who should have stepped up to the role
that climax character and didn't?
Meaning comes out, the,
the way we interpret meaning comes
out of those those questions.
So when we look at the influence line,
it's the identity character,
their goal, what blocks them.
Climax is still fixed by
the statements of the story.
But then this emotion at the end,
as the story finishes, and
just after the story finishes, that
residual emotion that you feel, winds up
being that and the climax character,
and those two are closely related.
Wind up being the greatest determinant,
the greatest factor driving
the influence of the story, DARPA,
pushing us for, for metrics.
Then, with a fiction so
hard I decided, all right, just for
them I'll create these those
elements into a into an equation.
Give them a metric and
they won't work and but they'll be happy.
It's a metric here it is the influence
potential is that residual emotion
times the difference between
the evaluation on a likeability scale,
how you relate to the identity character,
your identity character,
minus how you relate to
the the enemy chara, foe character.
And every time we tested it, this, so
this has a value range of 60 to minus 60.
Any score,
any story that scored outside of the range
of plus 45 to minus 45 was
described consistently,
as profound, as memorable,
as moving, as impactful.
Any story that scored in that range,
was never described that way.
And that's just taking three
little simple elements
of story and, and I, I, I don't like it,
partly because this factor has got
somehow represent two, two elements.
It, it's somehow the climax character tied
up, the nature of the climax character and
how you, the audience member, relate to
that climax character tied up in there,
and it, we, we're unable to break it out.
because we didn't know to look for that,
until after we were f, finished, the point
is don't use the equation, but think
of how simple those little terms are.
So, we found that the influence model,
that those influence elements controlled
relevant, could explain relevance
transportation identification meaning.
So what does it look like
when you go to use it?
Let me go back to this diagram,
and I'll do two real quick demos,
on what it looks like when
you actually use this.
Really what we are saying is that story,
is not the content,
story is the way you organize the content.
It is the wa,
it is the way you structure the framework
on which you hang your content.
And so, the idea of st, story then becomes
a way of thinking, a way of planning.
And the idea is to think about how you
want, what you want to get across.
And how you want the person in your
intended audience to position themselves
within this story structure.
And that influences structure in
how you want them to position you.
Two quick examples.
One,Aramco Saudi oil company is
in the middle of changing their
identity from big oil to
energy technology company.
Now Aramco has very little to do
with energy in the United States.
They don't refine here, they don't
ship here, they don't drill here.
It's all over in Saudi Arabia, and their
big clients are all in Europe and Asia.
But there is a very strong
presence of Aramco in America.
They come here for
skilled labor of all fields, for
suppliers and for research partners,
because this is where
those pools all, all reside.
And they've always felt like
they go to regulators state and
federal, almost like Oliver.
Please sir, let us stay here.
And they don't want to
be that way anymore.
What they want is for
those same regulators to come to them and
say please stay, we need you.
So they said, okay,
how do we work that out in story terms?
Well, it's a question, they'll they
always put themselves the main character,
they'll put the regulators as their enemy,
and
regulators were also the climax character,
the ones who would decide how it came out.
So they Aramco, suddenly is powerless, so
I said flip the story, flip the story.
That's not the story is, this is they
one that they're now working with,
energy is opportunity.
Energy is essential to human opportunity.
Opportunity to communicate, to travel, to
get better food, to get healthcare to get
heat in your home, essential,
energy is an essential human opportunity.
We've now put it one of two
characters there, one is
representation of the public of some,
whatever country we're now talking about.
Their goal is to get the energy that they
need to have the opportunities that bring,
that, are an essential part of
being a modern human being, human.
The antagonist, this, the,
the, the problems they face.
It can be poverty.
It can be lack of infrastructure.
You get, you know, what those are.
Who's the climax character?
Aramco now comes in as the climax
character, and says, yes we can do that.
You, you, you give us what we need and
we'll come in, we, we can help with that.
And all of a sudden, if this is
a regulator they are talking to,
the goal of the regulator
of course is to provide for
their citizenry that essential
human opportunity of energy.
Aramco stays over here,
it's just restructuring the story, so
that you're positioning people within
the story so that they'll participate.
But the positions where you want
them to participate themselves.
Second one, it's a non-profit over in
Berkeley that I'm working with now.
We're, we're still very much in,
in the process, but it's a good example.
It's the Center for Genetics and Society.
And they want responsible controlled
development of human genetic technologies.
And what that, in a practical way,
always means is that they're the naysayer.
They're the drag.
They're the brakes.
They're the negative force.
That comes in around
all new that seems to,
to appear, that they seem to have that,
or appear to have that role.
And they're starting to
feel that way themselves.
And they said,
we want to reposition ourselves.
We, we that's not who we are,
that's not how we want to be seen as,
even though they do promote caution.
So we said all right, well,
what we want to do is get you down here.
And, we, we have now come up with,
although we don't really have
the whole story on this yet,
we've come up with an analogy which, from
which the story is, is slowing evolving.
The analogy is an automobile.
The energy, or
the genetic development industry,
the technology industry is the gas pedal
and a revved up super-charged engine.
They're going full speed ahead to develop.
And instead of always being the brakes,
which don't get you anywhere
except safely stopped, we,
we're trying to posi, you know, I've,
I've been talking them into positioning
themselves differently in the car.
So if if the development
technology folk are,
are pedal to the medal gas pedal and
a revved up engine,
they actually become if I'm make
the main character society they, they,
the in, the industry almost becomes
the antagonist because we all know a car,
with e, if you just floor it and
go, you're going to crash and die.
So there suddenly shifting them into
an aspect into an aspect of being the,
the, the thing that needs control,
rather than the thing that's bringing
us the technology that we need.
Where do we want to put the center for
genetics and research?
Here, here are the car parts that they,
that we have come up with.
They are the mirrors, they reflect on
where you've been, and where you are.
They are the windshield wipers, they
give you a clearer view of the future.
They are the headlights and
especially they are the GPS system,
that tells you where you're going.
And they'll still be the same cautionary
tale that they have always been.
But by positioning themselves over here,
all of a sudden they look
like essential partners in,
in the development process rather than
the nay sayers trying to block it.
It's story theory.
Every human brain is wired to make
sense of the world through these terms.
And because we've now been able to start
marrying neuroscience and, and what,
and the story science, which, by the way,
predates neuroscience by about 1500 years.
And, it's far more nuanced and
detailed than is the neuroscience,
we can start to interpret
the neuroscience in story terms.
That give story users some real,
specific tools to use in formulating
the stories that they create.
That is the highlight section of
the research that we're now doing into
story structure and how it how it relates,
in this particular case,
to positioning how people
participate within the story.
And I will stop there because I believe,
I am 30 seconds over.
[MUSIC]
