Speaker  |  Author  |  Futurist

Storytelling is one of the hottest buzzwords of the last few years. Far from being merely a trend or fad though, the power of narrative is unrivalled in its ability to capture and maintain the attention of a listener. From science to sociology, narrative consistently emerges as fundamental to human wiring – as a tool of persuasion, its significance is hard to overstate.

The human brain appears to be so wired for narrative that when a story is absent, we will create one in order to make sense of the world around us. Some of the pioneering work examining this dynamic was conducted by legendary Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider back in the 1940s. Heider’s research centred on showing subjects the animation of 2 simple triangles, a rectangle and a circle. With only one exception, every single research participant read an entire plot line complete with drama, love affairs and bullying into the four shapes on the page. Without a clear narrative, it is human nature to invent one.[1]