The allure of stories

5:00 – Many thinkers have alluded to the function of stories in expanding our experiences. As T.S. Eliot put it, “We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.”

11:30 – A brief popular discussion of the dramatic principle known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun.’

14:00 – See Lost in a Book, by Victor Nell. For the idea of “narrative transportation,” see the work of Richard Gerrig, especially the book  Experiencing Narrative Worlds.

26:00 – In a recent paper, Dr. Mar has outlined the two routes through which reading fiction may boost social abilities. See also his recent review of work in this area. 

29:00 – See Dr. Mar’s earlier review on the cognitive neuroscience of fiction reading. See also his lab’s recent review of published studies on the question of whether brief exposure to fiction can improve social ability. 

34:00 – For a review of work using the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task, see here. 

36:00 – On the relationship between the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task and oxytocin, see this influential study. See also this attempt to replicate those findings.

37:00 – The study by Robin Dunbar and colleagues on social experience and pain thresholds.

43:30 – See Dr. Tehrani’s study on the phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood. For anyone unfamiliar, here is a version of the story. For anyone unfamiliar with the Wolf and the Kids, here is a version of the story. 

47:00 – On the East Asian story known as the Tiger Grandmother, see here.

52:00 – See Dr. Tehrani’s study of a broad swath of Indo-European folktales. For a general overview of Dr. Tehrani’s work in this area, see here. 

55:00 – For discussion of five documented “content biases” and an experimental test of these biases in the context of urban legends, see Dr. Tehrani’s recent study here. 

58:00 – The idea of “minimally counter-intuitive” ideas—and their allure—was originally formulated within the cognitive science of religion. For work on “minimally counter-intuitive” elements in the transmission of urban legends, see Dr. Tehrani’s study on “Bloody Mary.”

1:02:00 – See Dr. Mar’s recent meta-analysis comparing stories and essays.  

1:07:00 – For discussion of the “auditory cheesecake” idea and the evolutionary origins of music, see our previous episode, The Roots of Rhythm. For ideas about the evolutionary origins of fictions, see Gerrig’s Experiencing Narrative Worlds.

1:10:00 – The study on the role of storytelling among the Agta, a hunter-gatherer group. 

1:11:00 – A study finding that scientific abstracts with narrative elements get more citations.