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The psychology of stories

The psychology of stories. Communication 200 (Oct 4, 2000) Kristine Samuelson Byron Reeves. Why are stories compelling?. The grammar of stories matches the way humans think and feel Stories have evolutionary significance The person with the best story survives

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The psychology of stories

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  1. The psychology of stories Communication 200 (Oct 4, 2000) Kristine Samuelson Byron Reeves

  2. Why are stories compelling? • The grammar of stories matches the way humans think and feel • Stories have evolutionary significance • The person with the best story survives • Stories influence conscious thought • Bias in memory • Effects on judgments and evaluations

  3. Assumptions of psychological theories about stories • People are mentally active • People try to organize information • Unidirectionality of thinking -- people reduce complexity; they don’t create it • Reduction of complexity is efficient but often troublesome (e.g. stereotypes) • Stories organize thinking

  4. Information processing models • Three stages of processing • acquisition of information • retention • retrieval • Primary attention to representation of information in memory • Stories are the stuff of memory

  5. Three different storage units • Sensory storage • information that impinges on sense organ • veridical and decays in seconds • The work space • temporary storage • decays in minutes if not permanently encoded • Permanent storage • long-term memory • Stories are most important for organizing permanent memory

  6. Organization of information in permanent memory • Similar information is stored together • The most general concept that describes storage is “schema” • Types of schema • Scripts -- social action as a series of events • Prototypes -- idealized schema used to categorize more highly variant information • Story grammars -- organization of information by event sequences

  7. More about schema • Similar to common ideas about thinking: • “top of my head” • “that makes me think of…” • “Stanford students always…” • “that reminds of what happened next…”

  8. Schema are interconnected networks of information • Networks of information • Storage bins filled from the top

  9. Predictions about media effects using this model • Information decays if not encoded as a story in permanent storage • The most recent stories are templates for long-term memory • Stories bias memory by adding and subtracting information • Recall best for story consistent information

  10. The psychological parts of stories • Psychological stages of a story • equilibrium at the outset • disruption of equilibrium by some action • recognition of the disruption • uncertainty about the the possibility of repair • attempt to repair the disruption • reinstatement of equilibrium

  11. Memory for story consistent information (A. Lang) • Empirical study about broadcast news • Inverted pyramid vs. story sequence • Better memory (recall after watching) for stories • Stories liked better than facts • Implications for assignment editors?

  12. The study of stories in media effects • Agenda setting effects • Which stories are important vs. • What the stories convey • Cultivation effects • Media centralize story telling • The central stories bias local interpretation • Priming studies • Mere presence of stories influences processing of subsequent information

  13. Arousal and stories • The creation and resolution of conflict is arousing and compelling • “Get them sick, get them well” advertising • Physical arousal in violent video games (story games vs. random killing) • Arousal and drama • Being excited is separate from feeling happy or sad • Arousal transfers from bad feelings to good • The arousal of conflict in stories feeds the good feelings at time of story resolution

  14. Can the influence of stories be unconscious? • Subliminal priming • Much interest in media effects • Many contemporary examples: • RATS • Sex in ice cubes • The Lion King • Connections between “story” elements need not be conscious

  15. Unconscious priming in psychology • lots of empirical interest recently • none of the studies are like the popular claims • different vocabulary - “semantic activation without subjective awareness”

  16. Unconscious paradigms for priming • dichotic listening • “cocktail party” phenomenon • shadowing • parafoveal vision • information flashed outside of visual focus • backward pattern masking • information flashed quickly at point of focus • beyond subjective or conscious identification threshold

  17. A media experiment • Could this work with video? • Video clips below and above identification threshold • 1 frame with mask • 2 frames with mask

  18. Experimental design • Happy or sad face, or no picture • 20 seconds of person talking (newscaster, moderators in ads, etc..) • Rate emotion of people in the video

  19. Results • Priming of related information is influential even when it’s conscious • People need not aware of the material being primed

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