This nonfiction book explores the human instinct to tell stories, examining why we create narratives and how they influence our understanding of the world. Cognitive scientist Fritz Breithaupt delves into the evolution of stories as they are passed down, revealing their role in bringing order to chaos and evoking powerful emotions. While acknowledging the potential pitfalls of narrative addiction, Breithaupt ultimately champions storytelling as a key to escaping unhappiness and envisioning a better future.
Storytelling is part of being human. In this nonfiction book, we learn why and how such narratives can also be a trapHumans are storytelling animals. We narrate our lives as soon as we can speak and populate those tales with classic characters: heroes, mentors, villains. In, cognitive scientist Fritz Breithaupt explores why we render the world in stories—and how the rewards of narrative thinking keep us spinning out yarns..
Breithaupt’s inquiry draws on “telephone game” studies that ask each participant to tell a story in their own words, then pass it to someone else who does the same. These ongoing exchanges, he argues, help to illustrate what narratives do for us. Disjointed tales grow more coherent and logical as they move down the line, showing how storytelling brings sense and order to a complex, chaotic world.
Even so, Breithaupt remains a narrative optimist. Our storytelling knack, he contends, primes us to master what he calls “playability”: rendering endless possible futures in story form, which helps us anticipate and plan for the best of these futures. “Narratives can be the medium of our unhappiness,” he writes, “but they are also the means of escaping it.
STORYTELLING HUMAN BEHAVIOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE EMOTION FUTURE PLANNING
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