Tell Stories to Influence People

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

We like to think of ourselves as rational animals swayed by good reasoning and solid evidence. But in reality, most people find emotional connection far more compelling than facts. And emotional connection doesn’t live in the world of science and data; it lives in storytelling.

As much as it pains me to say this as a scientist, your communication is likely to be more influential if you spend less time describing evidence and more time crafting a relatable narrative.

Comic from Jake Likes Onions

The evolution of storytelling

Every human culture on Earth uses storytelling. But why is it so ubiquitous?

In 2017, researchers visited an indigenous hunter-gatherer community in the Philippines called the Agta. They first asked members of the community to share some stories they frequently told each other.

All of the stories the Agta described were about social behavior, and they typically involved humanized characters cooperating in some form. Here’s one of their stories, as reported in the research paper:

“There is a dispute between the sun (male) and the moon (female) to illuminate the sky. After a fight…