The Allure of Narrative
A ubiquitous, primeval pattern
In the Russian folktale, Vasilisa the Beautiful, the eponymous protagonist overcomes adversity to ultimately escape the clutches of her evil stepmother and stepsisters. Its guileless plot however belies the sophisticated themes it explores: the oppressed heroine; transcendence from ignorance to knowledge, justice and cosmic retribution, and feminism and female empowerment, to name a few. Vasilisa was one of the hundreds of Slavic folktales analysed by Vladimir Propp in the early twentieth century culminating in his seminal work Morphology of the Folk Tale. Propp identified thirty-one distinct narrative elements or ‘narratemes’ a selection of which he argued typically occur within all fairytales in a fixed, consecutive order using what literary theorists have dubbed ‘syntagmatic’ structural analysis.1 Implicit within Propp’s findings, and within structuralist analysis generally, is the central role that narrative plays within human communication, cultural expression and comprehension of reality. Storytelling has accordingly been described as a deeply ‘patterned’ activity common across all cultures despite the enormous superficial,variation in the content, style, and tone of those stories.2 As the French literary theorist Roland Barthes observed:
… narratives are a sort of human material, a class of thing which humans produce. At first glance, they are simply impossible to organise. There are millions and millions of narratives, developed over an indefinite period of time, the origins of which are unknown. In every possible and imaginable human society, there has always been, and always will be, narrative. Narrative exists at every level of culture: in the most elaborate, advanced literature, in mass literature, in novels, cinema, ‘comics’, and particular series of images. Narrative is everywhere: in every epoch, in every country, in every culture. It uses any material it can: the written or spoken word, the moving or still image. Narrative is everywhere.3
This ubiquity and universality are perhaps reasons why lawyers, literary scholars and movie script-writers alike have long recognised the ‘power of narrative’, ‘the power of stories’ and that ‘stories are persuasive.’4 Interestingly, there is evidence to suggest that readers respond to narratives in the same way regardless of whether they are labelled as ‘fact’ or ‘fiction.’ 5 Indeed there are scores of articles in the legal and social science sphere seeking to explain this mysterious ‘power.’ Typical of this literature is the observation by Brooks that ‘narratives do not simply recount happenings; they give them shape, give them a point, argue their import, proclaim their results.’6 Yet when examined closely, such literature and observations are found wanting, even banal. Precisely why is narrative so powerful? Why exactly are stories persuasive? Why is giving ‘happenings’ shape significant for humans? The answers to these questions are profoundly complex. Scholars from a variety of disciplines including literary theory, law, psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology and neuro-science have attempted to answer those questions with varying degrees of success. It is of course not the goal of this article to answer those profound questions but rather to explore some of the ‘scientific’ (or depending on one’s perspective, pseudo-scientific) explanations for the allure of narrative.
Narrative psychology or the psychology of narrative
In psychology, narratives are generally conceived as accounts of events, which involve some temporal and/or causal coherence7 a notion which of course immediately resonates with the legal mind. Indeed, a separate and discrete subfield of psychological research has evolved known as ‘narrative psychology.’ The term is attributed to Theodore R Sarbin, a former professor of psychology and criminology at the University of California, Santa Cruz who described narrative as a ‘root metaphor’ for psychology – that is, a fundamental metaphor for examining and interpreting human behaviour.8 Central to narrative psychology is the development of a phenomenological understanding of the unique ‘order of meaning’ constitutive of human consciousness.9 A key feature of this ‘order of meaning’ is the human experience of time and temporality.10 As Crossley observes:
Everything experienced by human beings is made meaningful, understood and interpreted in relation to the primary dimension of ‘activity’ which incorporates both ‘time’ and ‘sequence’. In order to define and interpret ‘what’ exactly has happened on any particular occasion, the sequence of events is of extreme importance. Hence, a valid portrayal of the experience of selfhood necessitates an understanding of the inextricable connection between temporality and identity.11
For Sarbin, a narrative (or story, which are interchangeable concepts) is a symbolised account of actions of human beings that has a temporal dimension.12 The story has a beginning, middle, and an ending which is held together by recognisable patterns of events (plots).13 Integral to the plot structure are predicaments necessitating resolution.14 Indeed, Sarbin sees narrative as the organising principle for human action which can be used to help explain the observation that human beings always seek to impose structure on the flow of experience.15
Self and morality
One of the central premises of the narrative psychological approach is of the essential and fundamental link between experiences of self, temporality, relationships with others and morality. 16 We each have a sense of who we are through a sense of where we stand in relation to ‘the good’. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor contends that concepts of self and morality are inextricably intertwined – we are ‘selves’ only because certain issues matter for us.17 According to Taylor, this connection between our sense of morality and sense of self, suggests that one of our basic aspirations is the need to feel connected with what we see as ‘good’ or of crucial importance to us and our community.18 An individual human cannot be a ‘self’ on their own but only in relation to certain ‘interlocutors’ who are crucial to the language of self-understanding. Self is accordingly constituted through ‘webs of interlocution’ in a ‘defining community.’19 To illustrate, and as alluded to above, all cultures transmit to children knowledge of typical patterns of relationships, meanings and moralities through myths, fairytales, histories and stories.20 Readers will of course recognise the similarities between the plight and fate of Vasilisa with Cinderella for example. As early as childhood, individuals are taught to see connections between events, people and the world in a certain way through the stories and narratives told within the family unit.21 This process continues throughout a person’s lifetime– adolescents and adults alike constantly experience TV dramas, soap operas and movies, all of which play out in the same way as the fairytale does for the child. 22 It is this portrayal of the experience of selfhood that necessitates an understanding of the inextricable connection between temporality and identity.23
Narrative and consciousness
Researchers in cognitive psychology have been exploring the role of narrative constructions in human consciousness. That research seeks to examine the relations among the findings, concepts, and methods of phenomenological, psychological, and neurobiological analyses of narrative and consciousness.24 It is beyond the scope of this article to examine those findings in any detail however a number of observations can be made.
Katherine Nelson argues that the broadening of a child’s consciousness takes place by way of various social dimensions, communicative discourse, and an ‘innate’ human inclination to craft narratives. Nelson does not portray narrative as some special human gift but rather as part of a range of developments experienced by a child transitioning into the linguistic world. Such developments include evolving self awareness, perception of others, and an expanding understanding of a world extending beyond the self. For Nelson, while narrative stems from and is owned by the community, it plays a pivotal role in the personal lives of children. Narrative serves as a vehicle through which the consciousness of self and the expansive social and temporal world is unveiled, gradually evolving as a unique subjective layer of conscious awareness.25 A different approach is adopted by Valerie Hardcastle, a professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Cincinnati. Hardcastle contends that a quest for self-identity propels human linguistic and cognitive growth. She points out that children’s earliest emotional expressions suggest an ongoing engagement with narrative and that from a very early age children seek to interpret both the world and themselves as coherent and meaningful stories, replete with plot and temporal sequence. In Hardcastle’s view, language and reasoning are later enhancements that contribute to this primary endeavour of meaning-making. In this context, Hardcastle highlights the significance of emotional expressions in a child’s quest to make sense of their experiences, underscoring their role in structuring reasoning, steering thoughts, and grounding autobiographical memory.26
Evolutionary explanations
But where does this ‘innate’ human inclination for narrative come from? Alas, the research is wanting. Nelson observes that it is ‘accepted’ by a number of socialcultural theorists that there is no identifiable origin or source for how children of two or three years come to interpret others’ intentions, to form canonical scripts, to understand and compose stories of their own.27 Some scholars have posited the role of evolution.28 To that end, it has been argued that consuming fiction leads to the acquisition of evolutionary ‘fitness related’ knowledge (such as foraging and co-operation). It has also been said that fiction assists individuals in seeking to self regulate one’s emotional states and helps them simulate scenarios to better prepare for real world challenges.29 An alternative hypothesis suggests that narrative fictions are by-products which did not evolve through natural selection. In this hypothesis it is argued that fiction co-opts pre-existing cognitive capacities and preferences that evolved in the human mind for no reason related to fiction, and that this explanation is sufficient to explain the existence, universality, and pervasiveness of fiction in human cultures.30 One version of this hypothesis is known as the ‘cheesecake hypothesis.’ The preference that makes humans enjoy cheesecake (the desire for glucose) evolved well before the advent of cheesecakes. Dubourg and Baumard dismiss both of these hypotheses as inadequate, instead putting forward a hypothesis that narrative fiction is best seen as a form of ‘entertainment technology.’
Why technology? Dubourg and Baumard argue that narrative fiction has a lot in common with other cultural inventions such as, for example, wheels, computers or kayaks: they are each cultural products designed by the human mind to perform specific functions. While humans did not evolve cognitive mechanisms specifically designed to craft kayaks, they did evolve specific motivations that regulate how to allocate scarce time and energy. To that end humans evolved specific cognitive mechanisms (such as fine motor skills) that are flexible enough to be used in a variety of contexts. To quote the authors:
Following the same line of argument, we argue that humans did not evolve any specific mechanisms to invent fictions [sic] but rather used their evolved cognitive mechanism to invent fictions just as they did for any other technologies. Yet, the production of fictions can be considered as an adaptive behaviour because it is regulated by the evolved motivation to fulfill a specific adaptive goal. What is this goal? We argue that fictions are specifically used to entertain other people.31
Dubourg and Baumard develop their hypothesis by proposing that because it is highly attractive and entertaining, fiction can be used to fulfill any evolutionary relevant goal that needs others’ attention to be caught, be it signalling one’s values to potential mates or co-operative partners, transmitting knowledge, communicating social norms or selling products. While humans did not specifically evolve to tell fictional stories, they do produce fiction as a result of other adaptations such as language and the capacity to simulate.
Archetypes of the role of fiction
The great Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst posited the existence of universal, intrinsic experiences fundamental to human life – such as belonging, love, death, and fear. He termed these experiences the ‘collective unconscious’ expressed through ‘primordial images’ or ‘archetypes.’ According to Jung, these archetypes, shaped by evolutionary forces, can be observed in individual behaviours and experiences. Many of these archetypes are well known to any filmgoer: the hero, the outlaw and the caregiver, by way of example. Significantly, Jung believed that the collective unconscious transcended cultures and comprised a vast spiritual ‘heritage’ innate in each human’s brain structure. Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes are controversial although some recent research in cognitive science suggests they may not be completely unfounded. Becker and Neuberg, for example, argue that advances in contemporary cognitive science suggest that ‘our internal representational systems are powerfully shaped by interacting evolutionary, developmental, and neuro-computational processes’ and that archetypes reflect the interaction of ‘domain-specific challenges and domain general simulations’ which are omni-present throughout human evolution.32 Archetypes arise, accordingly, as a consequence of evolutionary dynamics and personal experience. Indeed, the archetype approach has been seen as a useful ‘springboard’ for developing hypotheses about narrative effects. As the authors of a recent paper observe:
Becker and Neuberg’s work fits well with the perspective that fictional worlds can be an important training ground for real interactions and provides a more detailed evolutionary basis for the appeal of narratives in general. Narratives may be an important expression of archetypes because they often illustrate common themes or human experiences, yet portray these ‘universal’ themes in a variety of different ways. The variation between narratives is in part due to the kinds of individual and cultural differences highlighted in Becker and Neuberg’s approach.33
Drawing on the ‘flow theory’ developed by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the same authors argue that archetypal characters ease the mental processing of a story and allow audiences’ expectations to be met through familiarity while creating curiosity and interest through the use of different settings, relationships, and scenarios.34
The science of narrative
A slightly different, although perhaps not totally unrelated, perspective emerges from the physical sciences. In a series of experiments, Dr Paul Zak and his team found that compelling narratives cause oxytocin release and motivate people to engage in co-operative behaviour.35 Oxytocin is a small peptide synthesised in the hypothalamus of all mammals. Studies have found oxytocin to be synthesised in the human brain when a subject is in receipt of a signal of trust and that human oxytocin response was similar to that found in social rodents signalling that another person (or rodent) is safe and familiar.36 Zak, a professor of neurology and of economics, has also found that oxytocin is the biological instrument that puts people ‘in thrall to a story.’ As Zak explains:
If we do not attend to a story, it will not pull us into its narrative arc. Attention is a scarce neural resource because it is metabolically costly to a brain that needs to conserve resources. If a story does not sustain our attention, then the brain will look for something else more interesting to do. We also found that the change in oxytocin was associated with concern for the characters in the story, replicating our earlier finding. If you pay attention to the story and become emotionally engaged with the story’s characters, then it is as if you have been transported into the story’s world. This is why your palms sweat when James Bond dodges bullets. And why you stifle a sniffle when Bambi’s mother dies.
Zak is referring to the ‘hooks’ that makes you yearn for more when reading a book or watching a movie while the sympathetic response Zak describes is described by narratologists as ‘transportation.’ Every good author and filmmaker know how to do this – by constantly increasing tension in the story.
Similar findings have been made by neuroscientists.37 In a series of experiments, Wendy Suzuki from the Centre for Neural Science in New York, observed the effects of storytelling upon listener’s brains. Suzuki and her colleagues found that the neural activity in many cortical and subcortical areas in the brain was similar across all listeners, ranging from early auditory areas, to linguistic areas, to high-order areas in the parietal and frontal cortices.38 Further studies have shown that the neural responses in listeners’ brains were similar across Russian listeners who listened to a Russian story and English listeners who listened to a translated version of the same story, demonstrating that the same narrative can evoke similar responses, regardless of the linguistic system used to convey it. Suzuki hypothesised that the similar brain responses across varied listeners was mediated by the level of shared understanding.
Lessons for the advocate
In a 2021 speech to the Australian Academy of Law, Justice Jackson of the Federal Court identified at least four key attributes of narrative in advocacy and the law generally, each of which have been identified above: comprehension, context, specificity and a narrative’s ethical dimension.39 His Honour observed that law was not merely a collection of rules but a ‘web of stories’
:… one way of looking at a trial is to understand it as a formal arrangement of narratives. After all, every participant is telling a story. And they do it in a conventionally ordered way. Pleadings, or at least statements of claim, are a form of stylised narrative. Counsel will probably give a narrative of the case in opening, sometimes a detailed one by reference to the documents. Then come the witnesses – what are they doing, if not telling stories? Then come closing submissions and, finally, the need for the judge, and perhaps the jury to develop their own narrative about what happened.
His Honour further noted that stories do not just recite the facts of an event; they show what that event means. In that way, a good narrative will embrace both the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. It is capable of communicating both broad themes and values, and the nuance of specific, lived experiences.40 It is hoped that the brief review of the scholarly literature on narrative within this article gives the reader a sound foundation from which to consider, and reflect upon, his Honour’s sage advice on the role and allure of narrative in advocacy. BN
ENDNOTES
1 That is, relating to syntax. By contrast, ‘paradigmatic’ structural analysis describes the thematic patterns which are said to underscore the relevant text such as the ‘binary oppositions’ made famous by Clause Levi-Strauss.
2 Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Foreword: Telling Stories’ (1989) 87(8) Michigan Law Review 2073, 2085.
3 Paolo Fabbri, ‘On Narrative: An Interview with Roland Barthes’ (2022) 39(7–8) Theory, Culture & Society 159 at 163.
4 Justice Jackson of the Federal Court of Australia. Delivered at the Australian Academy of Law event ‘The Narrative Voice in Fiction and in Law’, Perth, 27 October 2021.
5 Green, Melanie C, Kaitlin Fitzgerald and Melissa M Moore, ‘Archetypes and Narrative Processes’ (2019)30(2) Psychological Inquiry 99, 99.
6 Peter Brooks, ‘Narrative in and of the Law’ in James Phelan and Peter J Rabinowitz (eds), A Companion to Narrative Theory (Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 415, 419.
7 Lisa Tsoi Hoshmand, ‘Narratology, Cultural Psychology, and Counseling Research’ (2005) 52(2) Journal of Counseling Psychology 178.
8 Handler, Richard, ‘Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct’ 515, 515–6.
9 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 2.
10 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 2.
11 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 2.
12 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 3.
13 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 3.
14 Sarbin, TR (ed) (1986) Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct, Praeger, New York. Page 3.
15 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 3.
16 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 3.
17 Taylor, C (1989) Sources of the self: The making of modern identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, page 34.
18 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 3.
19 Taylor, C.(1989) Sources of the self: The making of modern identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, page 39.
20 Howard, G (1991) ‘Culture Tales: A Narrative Approach to Thinking, CrossCultural Psychology and Psychotherapy,’ American Psychologist, 46, 3: 187-197.
21 Langellier, K and Peterson, E (1996) ‘Family storytelling as a strategy of social control’, in Mumby, D. (ed) Narrative and social control, Vol.21, Sage Annual Review of Communication Research, London.
22 McLeod, J (1997) Narrative and Psychotherapy, Sage, London.
23 Crossley, Michele L (2002) ‘Introducing Narrative Psychology’. In: Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, page 2.
24 Fireman, Gary D, Ted E McVay and Owen Flanagan (eds), Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2003). Page 3–4.
25 Introduction. Fireman, Gary D, Ted E McVay and Owen Flanagan (eds), Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2003). Page 7.
26 Fireman, Gary D, Ted E McVay and Owen Flanagan (eds), Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2003). Page 7.
27 Nelson, Katherine ‘Chapter 2. Narrative and the Emergence of a Consciousness of Self’, in Fireman, Gary D, Ted E McVay and Owen Flanagan (eds), Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2003). Page 21.
28 Melanie C Green ‘Stories of Minds and Bodies: The Role of Evolutionary Perspectives in Understanding Narrative’ in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2017.
29 Dubourg E and Baumard N (2022) ‘Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies.’ Front. Psychol. 13:786770. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.786770
30 Dubourg E and Baumard N (2022) ‘Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies.’ Front. Psychol. 13:786770. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2022.786770
31 Dubourg E and Baumard N (2022) ‘Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies.’ Front. Psychol. 13:786770. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.786770
32 David Vaughn Becker & Steven L Neuberg (2019) ‘Archetypes Reconsidered as Emergent Outcomes of Cognitive Complexity and Evolved Motivational Systems’, Psychological Inquiry, 30:2, 59-75, DOI:10.1080/1047840X.2019.1614795
33 Green, Melanie C, Kaitlin Fitzgerald and Melissa M Moore, ‘Archetypes and Narrative Processes’ (2019) 30(2) Psychological Inquiry 99, 99.
34 Green, Melanie C, Kaitlin Fitzgerald and Melissa M Moore, ‘Archetypes and Narrative Processes’ (2019) 30(2) Psychological Inquiry 99, 100.
35 Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative By Paul J. Zak, Ph.D.
36 Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative By Paul J. Zak, Ph.D.
37 Suzuki et al, ‘Dialogues: The Science and Power of Storytelling’ (2018) 38(44) Journal of Neuroscience 9468 at 9468.
38 Suzuki et al, ‘Dialogues: The Science and Power of Storytelling’ (2018) 38(44) Journal of Neuroscience 9468 at 9468.
39 Justice Jackson of the Federal Court of Australia. Delivered at the Australian Academy of Law event ‘The Narrative Voice in Fiction and in Law’, Perth, 27 October 2021.
40 Justice Jackson of the Federal Court of Australia. Delivered at the Australian Academy of Law event ‘The Narrative Voice in Fiction and in Law’, Perth, 27 October 2021