Our brains don't think in terms of disparate facts; we sense the world in order to know how to act within it. We're embodied beings, situated in a social, physical environments. When you get this combination of motion and cause and response, you can start to understand why our brains are optimized for stories.
Humans are natural storytellers; it's not a shortcut or feat of laziness, but just how we function. Storytelling as a fundamental skill for communication is why you see storytelling classes popping up for business, data, and science: it's a transdisciplinary feat that can make anyone care about your work.
The Best Science is Communicated Through Story
Think about some of the greatest scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. Many of them are communicated to the public through story. Think about the story of DNA. Think about the story of evolution. These are complex scientific concepts, but they are understood by the general public because they have been communicated through story.
Story Helps Us Remember
Our brains are wired to remember stories. If you try to remember a list of facts, you will likely forget them. But if you remember the story behind those facts, you are much more likely to remember the facts themselves. This is why textbooks that use story to communicate scientific concepts are so much more effective than textbooks that simply list facts.
Story Helps Us Care
A list of statistics about climate change won't compel people to take action—a story about a specific person or community will. Numbers don't make us empathize: seeing ourselves in another, recognizing the connectedness of our fate, and realizing the direct impact of our behaviors will help.
Story Helps Us Understand
If it's true, I'd understand it.
One of the greatest challenges today is overcoming the fluency bias, especially when confronted with a truth that seems to contradict their beliefs. If someone believes that the government is fundamentally bad, or that medical research is funded by corporations with ulterior motives, why would they accept complex jargon? Story helps provide context to relateto the information on a human level.
