Storytelling for Learning 1: Creating Meaning from Chaos

In 1944, experimental psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel used the video below in an experiment. They instructed their female undergraduate subjects to write down what happened in the movie.

I want you to do the same. Take out some paper, watch the video, and jot down a few sentences about what happened. 

What did you write down?  What was happening?

Now watch part of the video below, where some comedians talk about what they saw. You only need watch about a minute of the video to get the idea. (Warning: potentially offensive language...as you can imagine from comedians on YouTube.)

What is interesting is most people create a story. The characters are a shape. There is a setting of a room, or perhaps a house. Many people see a bullying event, or another form of conflict. 

Yet this is simply a video of shapes moving around a screen, isn't it?

Humans are wired to create meaning from input. That is why my aunt sees Jesus in her toast. That is why, when the photo below was taken by NASA in 1975 (yes, that is a real and unedited photo), the public FREAKED out. A face! A human face!  There is life there! They are communicating with us!

It is also why we love conspiracy theories. When random things happen, especially bad things, we want a logical explanation. Random bad luck is not an explanation that satisfies us. Thus, Elvis didn't die young. Nope. He faked his death to live in peace, away from the nuisance of fame. Now he is in hiding-- living out his years in a lovely coastal fishing village in Honduras.

p>Daydreaming is, for the most part, storytelling. It is us thinking about a possible scenario, planning something in the future and creating the "story" that surrounds it, or just fantasizing about something other than where we are at the moment. 

And down!

We spend 7.7 hours each day telling ourselves stories. That’s about half of our waking hours. And then we sleep. And tell stories in our dreams.