Empathy & Storytelling Research

What is Empathy?

"In a general sense, empathy is our ability to see the world through other people's eyes, to see what they see, feel what they feel, and experience things as they do. Of course, none of us can fully experience things the way someone else does, but we can attempt to get as close as possible, and we do this by putting aside our own preconceived ideas and choosing to understand the ideas, thoughts, and needs of others instead."



The Power of Storytelling: How to Build Empathy with the Right Narrative

"There’s some really interesting science behind why stories are so good at fostering empathy. Researcher Paul Zak found that stories change our behavior by literally changing our brain chemistry.

During one study, Zak and his researchers showed participants a story about a dad and his young son, who had cancer. The father is grappling the fact that his son’s disease is terminal. The researchers drew blood from participants before and after they saw the story and found that two chemicals were produced: cortisol, which focuses our attention on something important, and oxytocin, which is associated with care, connection, and empathy.

“I have dubbed oxytocin the ‘moral molecule,’ and others call it the love hormone,” Zak wrote. “What we know is that oxytocin makes us more sensitive to social cues around us. In many situations, social cues motivate us to engage to help others, particularly if the other person seems to need our help.”

After they were done with the study, participants were paid and then given a chance to donate money to charity. Participants who produced both cortisol and oxytocin were more likely to donate. Even more interesting, the higher the chemical levels, the more money they donated.

Next, Zak took the experiment further. He had researchers show one group of participants the story about the son with cancer and another group a story about the father going to the zoo with his son.

The zoo story “had a flat structure, rather than one with rising tension like the previous story,” Zak wrote. “Ben and his father look at a giraffe, Ben skips ahead to look at the rhino, Ben’s father catches up. We don’t know why we are watching Ben and his father, and we are unsure what we are supposed to learn.”

Zak found that participants who watched the zoo story tended to tune out and were much less likely to donate when they were done. This was a signal to Zak that not all stories have the same effects, and that stories with emotional components that build tension are more likely to keep attention and create empathy in the audience."

"On her blog, behavioral scientist Susan Weinschenk describes what happens to the brain when someone hears a story versus a bunch of facts and figures:

'Let’s say you are listening to me give a presentation on the global economy. I’m NOT telling a story, but giving you facts and figures. If we had you hooked up to an fMRI machine we would see that your auditory cortex is active, as you’re listening, as well as Wernicke’s area of the brain where words are processed. If you were reading a newspaper article on the same topic then we would see, again Wernicke’s area as well as your visual cortex as you are reading.'

But when someone hears a story complete with characters and emotional tie-ins, the listener is put in someone else’s shoes and experiences additional brain activity than if the storyteller was just reciting facts.

'If I started telling you a story about a family in South America that is being affected by changes in the global economy – a story about the father going to work in a foreign country to earn enough for the family, and the mother having to drive 100 kilometers for health care… what’s going on in your brain now? The Wernicke’s area would be active again, as well as the same auditory or visual cortices, BUT now there’s more activity. …And if I started talking about the devastation the family felt when their young son died before he could get medical treatment, then the empathy areas of the brain would be active.'"



Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One

"Stories have defined our world. They have been with us since the dawn of communication, from cave walls to the tall tales recounted around fires. They have continued to evolve with their purpose remaining the same; To entertain, to share common experiences, to teach, and to pass on traditions.

Today we communicate a bit differently. Our information is fragmented across various mass-media channels and delivered through ever-changing technology. It has become watered down, cloned, and is churned out quickly in 140-character blurbs. We’ve lost that personal touch where we find an emotional connection that makes us care.

Using storytelling, however, we can pull these fragments together into a common thread. We can connect as real people, not just computers. In this article we’ll explore how user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections."

"Utilizing storytelling, user experience teams can also inject emotion and value into the end product for users."



Wired for Empathy: How and Why Stories Cultivate Emotions

"Therefore, empathy, or feeling another person’s pain, is integral to societal and community functioning. Without this ability we would be significantly less likely to take actions to help others.

Emotions are important because they motivate us. Knowing that something is important is helpful, but it can’t compare to feeling that same knowledge."

"In this post, I’m going to share three main ideas related to effective storytelling.
When stories transport us, they can generate empathy.
Empathy can foster prosocial action, or action focused on helping others.
Stories can be used to break down bias, and foster inclusiveness."

"The ability of stories to create empathy is especially highlighted through a couple of research studies from the 1960s and ‘70s. In one, researchers found that white children who heard a story featuring a black protagonist/child had improved attitudes toward black children.

Similarly, another study found that second-grade students who read stories featuring black and other racial minority children were more likely to include black children in their own social group and reported more positive views of black people, than children who read stories with white main characters."

"These findings highlight how stories can be vehicles for empathy and the fostering of social inclusion. Moreover, they suggest that using stories intentionally to reduce bias would still work today, and not just for children."

"They note: 'there is growing evidence that reading a story engages many of the same neural networks involved in empathy.'

And this conclusion mirrors the theoretical orientation behind the study on transportation and empathy discussed earlier. The study authors write that the evidence suggests that 'seeing or reading about another person experiencing specific emotions and events activates the same neural structures as if one was experiencing them oneself, consequently influencing empathy.'"

"Oxytocin is the same hormone, that, when released, makes people more compassionate, more charitable, more generous and more trustworthy. It also makes people notice social cues better, thus making them more likely to help someone in need. In short, it puts people in a frame of mind that is great for cultivating advocacy.

Thus, the emotional simulation provided by compelling storytelling provides a neural foundation for empathy, and provides insight into why well-crafted stories are such powerful advocacy tools."



Storytelling Approaches in User Experience Design: How can storytelling benefit the designer?

"Stories inspire, motivate and trigger imagination. Stories have been a part of human life for centuries and they still capture the audience’s attention. While stories continue to evolve, the way people communicate is rapidly changing with the development of technology. Today, information is spread out across multiple platforms, equal to the stories we share. Stories are a key mechanism through which human experience has been shared for generations."

"Process of discovery"

"Storytelling has been a part of human lives for centuries. Dating back to ancient cultures, storytelling was essentially an oral form in combinations with body language. With the advent of writing and rapidly developing technology we can today find stories shared all over the world in many different forms. Hsu (2008) believes the answer for why our brains seems to be wired to enjoy stories could be rooted in our history as a social animal. A narrative is one of the many uses to which humans put language and there is no known culture that does not practice storytelling. Storytelling could be thought of as a psychological artefact, a verbal tool that appears in all cultures."

Podcast: The Power of Persuasive Storytelling

"As humans, we are hardwired to organise our thoughts through stories. They comprise everything from our creation myths to the anecdotes politicians use to pepper their speeches. Stories make us relatable to each other and connect to people’s emotions."

"If you have key information you want others to remember, tell them a story. If you want to use data to persuade people to take action, build visualisations to convey that data as a story."

"Storytelling is important because it is the most fundamental and shared human intelligence. It is the real fundamental way of how we learn, how we share, how we formulate our experience and how we tell others about it."