On words, emotion, bias, and the power of connection.
I am a storyteller.
So is my neighbor.
My brother.
The old lady I spoke to this morning in the supermarket.
And so are you.
Every one of us is an archive full of thoughts and narratives that define how we see the world and who we are. When I use that word – story – you might associate it with the latest Hunger Games novel that you read in three sittings. Or all those films that will receive Academy Award nominations this year. Perhaps you think of those fables your father used to read to you before going to bed, or even that political speech you recently listened to that made you think “What a show, let’s see how this will play out.” Those can all indeed be classified as a story, but that’s not even the beginning of what that word entails.
Even before language was created, the human species was already communicating through story. Perhaps not in the literary sense, but communicating through what we might retrospectively call story — through ritual, gesture, emotion rhythm and sound. This proves that the word has much more meaning than the credit we give it. Forget quirky musicals and sci-fi novels for a second here, because stories did not begin with language. In fact, language likely evolved, in part, as a tool to tell stories more efficiently.. Before words were ever used, homo sapiens connected with one another through the body. And we still do.
Now, when you are out to dinner with a friend, they might share something that happened to them last weekend. They might unknowingly use their hands to gesture how awful that date was. Through rapid eye movements and a wrinkled forehead, you see the shock in their facial expressions when reliving this moment. You both laugh collectively, the same high-pitched tone that signals that you understand exactly what they were going through. Not only that, but you empathize joyfully as you both try to lighten the situation with these ritualized looks of surprise and sounds of laughter. Later, on the phone to your sister, you might tell your friend’s horror date story, in order to bond and perhaps ease some of the tension you had at the beginning of the call regarding your quarrel last week.
The way others will see you is entirely based on what they tell themselves about who they think you are. Isn’t that strange? We will never fully be able to control how we are seen, only how we act. And yet, whether others will perceive it the way we want them to, is still completely out of our hands. If I imagine all the people in my life that I am closest to – my parents, brother, boyfriend, and some of my closest friends – as well as those who might know me differently – my therapist, teachers or mentors, work relations – I am certain that none of them would have the same opinion on who I am. To my core. There will certainly be a lot of similar characteristics that would emerge, but every one of them will touch upon another quality that they see. With their own magnifying glass that has been tampered with by their own life experiences.
It’s normal to see the world through our own-colored lenses. Every day in our lives, from the day we are born to the day we die, we are immersed in the movie that is filmed by our eyes, edited by our brains, and produced by our minds. As hard as we may try to enter another person’s cinema hall, the screen will still project our own production. Perhaps we recognize that the story has been tampered with, but you will never see the same movie. However hard you might try. You exist in an entirely different reality. Because it is nearly impossible to passively record what is happening around us. The fact of the matter is that we are active in the construction of our reality. Not only writers share the narrative structures that they create, but everyone does. Every single day. With this in mind, can anything ever be unbiased?
This same mechanism — our inability to see without interpreting — also applies to how we produce knowledge.
There are two formal ways to research any matter: Quantitative – meaning the collection of data expressed in numbers and graphs, often used to test or confirm theories and assumptions – and qualitative – focused on understanding concepts, thoughts or experiences through interviews with open-ended questions, observations and reviews on various (perhaps differing) perspectives. In short: quantitative research deals with statistics, qualitative research deals with words. Both are equally important, and both are inevitably prone to bias, as is all research. Following Campbell (1963/2002), Denzin (1978), and Longino (1990), bias is understood as an inevitable feature of research, mitigated through methodological safeguards rather than being eliminated. This means that no research can ever be unbiased, and no good researcher will ever claim that it can be. All they can do is be transparent and use careful methods to reduce its effects. So bias is not wrong or bad; it’s a starting point.
How does all this connect to stories? Well, in a sense the way we interpret research is based on our own biases. Similar to how we interpret anything that we see, hear or read. When your friend tells you their horror date story, you might empathize seeing as you have known this person for a long time. There is a certain trust you have in them, based on your own unconscious research that you have been conducting for the past ten years of your friendship. Their familiar presence, the experiences you both share, alongside this ritual of trying out a new restaurant once a month, has accumulated into a deep love for this person.
You know them.
Over the years they have proven to be a worthy companion through the actions you have observed in them and how they have been positively perceived by your mind. All of this combined makes you emotionally connected to them. You do not, however, have any such connection with the person they went on a date with. That person only exists in your reality, based on the description that your friend has given you alongside your own thoughts and biases.
Danish author Isak Dinesen said that to be a person is to have a story to tell. And those stories can act like social glue or social fissures – a tool that unites us or a tool that will split us apart. Because even though skilled researchers might be trained to acknowledge their biases, many of us are not. It is incredibly difficult to look inward, and even more so to acknowledge that it might be impossible for us to look outward objectively. Because why would we not want to believe in the stories our minds are creating? Why would we actively admit that we will never fully know anything? Admitting this is terrifying, and for some perhaps even humiliating. Who are we as the collective human species if we admit that we are all experiencing our own fever dream, that is like saying that I will never truly be connected to anyone at all.
Still, there is another element that binds the human species and that is emotion. I will never truly know how you feel and you will never truly know what I feel, but when we sit on the couch together watching a film about a dog who waits at the train station every day, for his deceased owner to come home, we might both shed a tear. Or when our book club meets in order to discuss that epic thriller full of plots twists and turns, we might bond over the exhilaration we felt and the excitement over the novel’s crazy ending. In Mirrors in the Brain, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2008) discovered that we have mirror neurons in our brains, meaning that when we observe another person’s emotion, this can partly activate similar patterns in our own brain, creating a primitive form of empathy. We are practically hardwired to understand each other through those expressions that show how we feel. That is the true social glue that brings us together. And stories can be a great tool to distribute the glue, if told well.
Stories are so much more than just a form of entertainment, they whole-heartedly influence the way we see the world. Seeing as humans perceive reality narratively (Bruner, 1991), the stories we absorb can completely change how we feel, think, or what we believe about society. When watching a film or TV series, when reading a book or a news article, when listening to a podcast or a discourse, we are subconsciously taking in new particles of information that will shape the way we think in the future. This is what makes artists so significant, as they are the ones telling the stories that influence our emotions, which then in turn shape our perception, changing society one step at a time.
On the flip side, we can equally absorb a different kind of story that is told with the objective of exerting control. Historically, artists would often be among the first to be persecuted for challenging an authoritarian regime or religious ideologies, which would threaten the stability of that control. Moreover, governments are in a way storytellers themselves, as they might use stories through campaigns, nationalism and education. However, this is not a black and white tale of the good artists and the bad politicians, as there are many artists who propagate or reinforce harmful ideologies, as well as governments who value and defend their people.
So, why do stories matter? Because everyone’s life is a story, made up of loads of tiny different stories, that shape the entire story of our human society. Let’s compare it to atoms and molecules. Molecules are formed by two or more atoms that stick together with bonds but react completely differently depending on how you arrange them. For instance, ice and water are the same substance (H₂O), but they differ depending on environmental conditions and how the atoms are connected. Let’s say that humans are like molecules, made up of many particles or atoms (stories), which can influence the matter depending on how they’re all made up. Humans are basically made up of the millions of stories they carry, which influence their actions, thoughts, sense of self and of the world.
Therefore, it is important not to underestimate the power of stories. They have the innate ability to change everything, for we not only absorb them, but every one of us is made up of those stories. Denying that is almost like rejecting the reality of our existence, whilst embracing this idea might be the first step in awareness to how these stories can influence us. They are our way of understanding ourselves and the world around us. It is completely fine – and perhaps even healthy – to acknowledge their importance and allowing stories influence us.
As long as we remain aware of when influence turns into control.
