The Theory of Mind: What Science Can Tell Us About the Art of Storytelling

What do coffee, clipboards, and hard wood seats have in common? Apart from being distinctly brown, Yale psychologist, John Bargh, recently conducted studies using all three to demonstrate the impact of environmental metaphor on our unconscious process of ascribing feelings and intentions to the people around us. This unconscious process is known in the scientific community as Theory of Mind.

In one of Bargh’s studies, students were asked how much they would be willing to spend on a new car. As part of the study, some students sat on an uncomfortable hardwood chair, while others were allowed the pleasure of a cushion in the waiting room. The resulting data suggested that the students who sat in the hardwood chair were less willing to concede in price negotiations for the car than those who waited in luxury. On the same line of thought, students asked to hold a heavy clipboard were more likely to take an interviewee seriously; if a researcher asked them to hold her iced coffee they were more likely to rate her as being a cold person.

What does this mean? It suggests that as we absorb the metaphors around us, they influence our theory of mind: we call this effect “priming.” We, as humans, associate heavy objects with “gravity” and seriousness, just as we associate the cold with people who are socially off-putting, and a rustic hardwood chair reminds us of frugality. These mundane objects in our environments change our behavior because they tell our minds a story.

The powerful speakers and inspiring leaders in our lives influence us to mirror their own theory of mind through the same powerful tool. When people listen to a story, they use the same parts of the brain used to ascribe feelings and intentions to real people. While telling a story, a speaker is able to prime the listener’s brain to respond emotionally to certain ideas.

Experiments done by Uri Hasson at Princeton show that when a listener is highly engaged, an MRI of their brain will match an MRI of the speaker’s; and in fact will actually go one step further—the engaged listener’s brain anticipates the story, reaching the feelings the speaker hasn’t even gotten to yet! Psychologists call this state of immersion in a story “narrative transport” and it is highly persuasive.

The 2005 film “Sideways,” with Paul Giamatti is an excellent way to illustrate narrative transport. In it, Paul Giamatti plays a fictional wine snob who snubs red wine and refuses Merlot with a passion. After the movie’s release, winemakers noticed a steep drop in the sales of Merlots and red wines. Even though the movie is a work of fiction and Giamatti was only playing a character, he persuaded a lot of people to change their behavior.

Why though? Why is it that stories and inanimate objects carry so much weight in the minds of us highly rational humans? Because the mental machinery used to make rational decisions is a recent adaptation. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman spent most of the 20th century discerning the cognitive shortcuts (“heuristics”) people use—instead of rational thought—in order to make quick, quality judgments. Being able to sniff out cheaters, see through lies, and know who is on your team subconsciously was a selected advantage on the Serengeti, and being able to spread these ideas through stories even more so. The better your theory of mind, the more likely you were to read your tribe and not be taken advantage of—being able to determine the actual shape of the earth or project next year’s fiscal outcomes didn’t matter yet.

In his treatise on the subject of storytelling in the workplace, Charlie Yang at Southern Connecticut State University details the success of companies who designed their corporate offices to maximize the number of stories employees tell each other. Companies like Pixar have large, open areas in their office for people to talk to each other casually, which improves how ideas and information spread from employee to employee.

A good story trumps statistics which, by themselves, aren’t emotional enough to be memorable or meaningful. This isn’t saying that data is unimportant. In their recent book “Think Like a Freak,” Dubner and Levitt, co-authors of “Freakonomics,” advise you to use statistical facts to make your arguments, but always make the data tell a story. So maybe the next time you get ready to give a presentation or prepare for a meeting, remember to make it meaningful (and persuasive) with a good story.

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