The Neuroscience of Storytelling

If you’re in the business of brands, you need to be good at storytelling. Stories help bring ideas to life, forge identities, mobilise communities, and create connection.

Yet so many of the brand stories we read fall flat. We often don’t even get past the first line and our attention drifts elsewhere.

When you want to motivate, persuade, or be remembered, start with a story of human struggle and eventual triumph. It will capture people’s hearts – by first attracting their brains. (Paul J. Zak, 2014)

So how do brands solve this maddening conundrum, and tell stories that actually engage their audience?

The neuroscience of storytelling

dIf you follow me on the old ‘gram, you’ll know that I love learning about neuroscience and how our brain affects our behaviour.

So I thought it would be cool to look at what actually happens from a neuroscience perspective when we hear a story.

But first, I want to remind you about a few little biological chemicals.

• The neurochemical oxytocin is produced in our bodies when we are trusted or shown warmth and kindness, and it enhances our sense of empathy, our ability to experience others’ emotions.

• Cortisol is nature's built-in alarm system – it's your body's main stress hormone.

• Dopamine does many things, but most noticeably it’s involved in helping us feel pleasure as part of the brain's reward system.

Neuroscientists have been studying brain patterns and blood content as people listen to stories, and have found that stories physically affect these chemicals, and even trigger certain behaviours:

• Cortisol commands the brain’s attention;

• Dopamine creates arousal as we anticipate an outcome; and

• Oxytocin triggers empathy and endorphins to leave us feeling good.

The Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, Paul J. Zak, has discovered that, in order to motivate empathy and a desire to cooperate with others, a story must:

Sustain attention from the start – attention – a scarce resource in the brain – can be commanded by developing tension during the narrative.

If the story is able to create that tension, the reader is more likely to share the emotions of the characters in it, and after the story ends, to continue mimicking the feelings and behaviours of those characters.

(Side note: the narrative arc explains why you might have been more motivated to go workout after watching Brad Pitt in Fight Club, or to tell your mates they HAVE to watch White Lotus, or to go travelling after watching The Beach)

The narrative arc

Many of the ‘stories’ we read/hear in our day-to-day life, on the tube, online, or on a website, are actually not stories. They’re simply content: sometimes engaging, sometimes dull, but nonetheless, just content. To be a story, a narrative has to:

• have a certain shape

• have a beginning, a climax with conflict, a resolution, and

• have an emotional impact on the listener/reader

That's why the most effective stories are character-driven, and follow the classic narrative arc that we see in all the movies we know and love. This is an incredibly powerful tool for your own storytelling too, if you have a personal brand.

Interestingly, neuroscientists have also found that neural coupling takes place when we read/hear a story, where the storyteller and listener’s brain patterns synchronise and a connection is felt.

Not only do people feel more engaged after hearing a story, they also change their behaviour – for example, donate money, tell a friend, or go and buy/do something. This is why storytelling is so powerful for brands!

How to tell stronger stories

When you want to motivate, persuade, or be remembered, start with a story of human struggle and eventual triumph. It will trigger people’s brains, in order to capture their hearts.

1. Thread in your values; your values should be an invisible undercurrent in your story – what you or the character believes in, the choices they make, how they treat others and expected to be treated in return.

2. Understand your audience; what is the feeling or emotion you’re trying to bring out in your audience as they read/listen to your story? What do you want them to do/think/feel along the way? You’re aiming to create neural coupling, and merge both the reader and the character under one shared vision.

3. Have a good (but bad) antagonist; Every good story has am antagonist that makes everything one big fat problelm. Your antagonist can be: a person like a villain in a movie, a personal barrier, like self-doubt, or a social or institutional construct that is creating a problem, something universal that creates suffering. The antagonist’s role is to trigger cortisol and dopamine in the reader.

4. A resolution; your story will wrap up with a resolution, either a success or a defeat. Defeat isn’t always bad, and can elicit strong emotions and create valuable insight. Think about the lessons you want your audience to have learned after reading your story. What might have changed in their world as a result? Do you want to trigger oxytocin and make your reader feel cooperative and empathetic? Or do you want to create anger and trigger cortisol?

5. What’s next; This bit isn’t always crucial, but it is the suspense bit, like the final clip before the film ends, or the last page of a book that makes you want to read the next one. Leave a hint of what is to come next for you and for your reader, and trigger dopamine by building anticipation.

It’s story time

Why not have a go at weaving these neuroscience insights into the way you tell your digital stories?

• Update your LinkedIn profile and website.

• Re-work your Instagram bio.

• Write an engaging newsletter.

• Write me a story ;) promise I’ll read it!