If people know me, they often know three things: I prefer the color orange, I drink Moxie, and I was in the Peace Corps. Arguably, this has little to do with the facts of my branding and marketing business, but clients remember it because it is my story. And the mind loves a story.
Furthermore, we don’t just remember stories better than facts. Stories are how we remember. It is how our minds work. Facts—verifiable chunks of info—are relatively new. “Truth” was grounded in storytelling long before it was related to facts.
As Mark Turner in his book, The Literary Mind, says, “Narrative imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining….Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories.”
Turner’s point is that the power of stories goes way beyond being a memory tool. It influences our decisions. This is the basis of George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller’s new book Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. As we all stand bewildered in the face of our topsy-turvy economy, Akerlof and Shiller make a startling connection:
“The human mind is built to think in terms of narrative, and human conversation tends to take the form of storytelling. Politicians are one significant source of stories, especially about the economy, and these stories can have an impact on the confidence of a nation. While it is considered unprofessional for economists to base their analyses on stories, what if the stories themselves move markets? What if the stories play a real part in how the economy functions? Stories can go viral, spreading by word of mouth and thereby spreading confidence or lack of confidence.”
This doesn’t imply that facts are useless, just that they do not speak for themselves. Fact: blind taste tests repeatedly show that people prefer Pepsi over Coke, until they know which drink they are tasting. Then preferences switches according to Andy Goldsmith’s The 60 Second Marketer. In this case, the story is powerful enough to support a brand to the tune of millions of dollars.
People speak for facts, and how we do it can make all the difference—whether it is for an individual, a business, or our economy.
-J. Bidwell
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Just the Facts (and Story), Ma’am
Furthermore, we don’t just remember stories better than facts. Stories are how we remember. It is how our minds work. Facts—verifiable chunks of info—are relatively new. “Truth” was grounded in storytelling long before it was related to facts.
As Mark Turner in his book, The Literary Mind, says, “Narrative imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining….Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories.”
Turner’s point is that the power of stories goes way beyond being a memory tool. It influences our decisions. This is the basis of George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller’s new book Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. As we all stand bewildered in the face of our topsy-turvy economy, Akerlof and Shiller make a startling connection:
“The human mind is built to think in terms of narrative, and human conversation tends to take the form of storytelling. Politicians are one significant source of stories, especially about the economy, and these stories can have an impact on the confidence of a nation. While it is considered unprofessional for economists to base their analyses on stories, what if the stories themselves move markets? What if the stories play a real part in how the economy functions? Stories can go viral, spreading by word of mouth and thereby spreading confidence or lack of confidence.”
This doesn’t imply that facts are useless, just that they do not speak for themselves. Fact: blind taste tests repeatedly show that people prefer Pepsi over Coke, until they know which drink they are tasting. Then preferences switches according to Andy Goldsmith’s The 60 Second Marketer. In this case, the story is powerful enough to support a brand to the tune of millions of dollars.
People speak for facts, and how we do it can make all the difference—whether it is for an individual, a business, or our economy.
-J. Bidwell