Research Hot-Takes on Narrative for Knowledge
Studies can tell us a lot about how people learn from and act on what they read, comparing traditional expository or persuasive writing to narrative–storytelling. Here are some hot takes on how storytelling transfers knowledge, motivation, and connection to scientific findings:
Explaining concepts through storytelling improves memory acquisition (Zacks et al. 2007) and simulates social experience (Mar and Oatley 2008).
Narratives rely on emotional mechanisms, like transportation into unfamiliar contexts and identification with characters, to be more persuasive than traditional models of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo 1986, Slater 1997, Green 2004).
Stories and sequential art have a natural cause-and-effect structure (Dahlstrom 2014), making them a natural way to explain scientific processes or present programmatic elements.
Narratives are read twice as fast and recalled twice as well as expository text (Dahlstrom 2014).
Storytelling is more convincing than expository text, particularly when the subject is sensitive to the topic or has conflicting beliefs (Mazzocco et al. 2010).
Narratives transport readers into new contexts, which shifts their beliefs to be more consistent with those presented in the story (Green and Brock 2000).
Convinced yet? If so, email travis@sequentialpotential.com to talk about turning your own project or program into a comic narrative!
