Generation to Generation: Learning From Each Other

Lauren Parodi

Mrs. Jewell

English 11: Period 7

10 February 2022

Part I. Read, highlight, and annotate

● 1st color: This is an obviously important point. (State your reasoning to the right.)
● 2nd color: This confuses me, is unclear to me, or I have a question. (Explain the confusion or curiosity.)
● 3rd color: This is an interesting or purposeful writer choice made for emphasis. (Explain the effect.)

Color-code Add your commentary

T- What do stories change in
How Stories Change the Brain the brain?
By Paul J. Zak A- Zak is a neuroeconomist.
He researches brain processes.
Greater Good, December 17, 2013
G- 2013 could be out of date
since that was 9 years ago.
1 Ben’s dying.
This is an effective hook since
2 That’s what Ben’s father says to the camera as we see Ben play in the it’s an abrupt emotion starter.
background. Ben is two years old and doesn’t know that a brain tumor will take
his life in a matter of months.

3 Ben’s father tells us how difficult it is to be joyful around Ben because the
father knows what is coming. But in the end he resolves to find the strength to be
genuinely happy for Ben’s sake, right up to Ben’s last breath.

4 Everyone can relate to this story. An innocent treated unfairly, and a protector Makes you feel like part of a
who seeks to right the wrong—but can only do so by finding the courage to group since everyone can relate
change himself and become a better person. This seems like the case for
Ben and his father.
5 A recent analysis identifies this “hero’s journey” story as the foundation for
more than half of the movies that come out of Hollywood, and countless books
of fiction and nonfiction. And, if you take a look, this structure is in the majority
of the most-watched TED talks.

6 Why are we so attracted to stories? My lab has spent the last several years What made them so interested
seeking to understand why stories can move us to tears, change our attitudes, in researching stories?
opinions and behaviors, and even inspire us—and how stories change our brains,
often for the better. Here’s what we’ve learned.

Why the brain loves stories

7 The first part of the answer is that as social creatures who regularly affiliate This is Zak answering the
with strangers, stories are an effective way to transmit important information and question he wrote in the
values from one individual or community to the next. Stories that are personal paragraph earlier.
and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain, and thus are better
remembered, than simply stating a set of facts.
He brings up another relatable
8 Think of this as the “car accident effect.” You don’t really want to see injured scenario.
people, but you just have to sneak a peek as you drive by. Brain mechanisms
Is that why we like ‘cautionary
engage saying there might be something valuable for you to learn, since car
tales’ even though they may
accidents are rarely seen by most of us but involve an activity we do daily. That not be as good as a happy
is why you feel compelled to rubberneck. story?

9 To understand how this works in the brain, we have intensively studied brain
response that watching “Ben’s story” produces. We have used this to build a
predictive model that explains why after watching the video about half of
viewers donate to a childhood cancer charity. We want to know why some people
respond to a story while others do not, and how to create highly engaging stories.

10 We discovered that there are two key aspects to an effective story. First, it Zak’s laboratory findings.
must capture and hold our attention. The second thing an effective story does is
“transport” us into the characters’ world.

What makes a story effective?

Why does he refer to himself in
11 Why do our palms sweat as we watch James Bond fight for his life? Paul Zak
the third person?
is helping find the answer.

12 Any Hollywood writer will tell you that attention is a scarce resource. Movies,
TV shows, and books always include “hooks” that make you turn the page, stay A comparison makes a
on the channel through the commercial, or keep you in a theater seat. confusing idea more clear.

It’s important to note in an

13 Scientists liken attention to a spotlight. We are only able to shine it on a article like this that humans
narrow area. If that area seems less interesting than some other area, our attention have short attention spans.
wanders.
Does paying attention really
use that much energy.
14 In fact, using one’s attentional spotlight is metabolically costly so we use it
sparingly. This is why you can drive on the freeway and talk on the phone or
listen to music at the same time. Your attentional spotlight is dim so you can
absorb multiple informational streams. You can do this until the car in front of
you jams on its brakes and your attentional spotlight illuminates fully to help you That’s why people keep
avoid an accident. watching the movie or TV
show after the “hook.”
15 From a story-telling perspective, the way to keep an audience’s attention is to Allows readers to interact with
continually increase the tension in the story. Ben’s story does this. How will the text.
Ben’s father be able to enjoy his son’s last weeks of life? What internal resources
will he draw upon to be strong and support his dying son? Does this mean listen?
We listen to the story so we can
16 We attend to this story because we intuitively understand that we, too, may be prepared in case something
have to face difficult tasks and we need to learn how to develop our own deep similar happens to you.
resolve. In the brain, maintaining attention produces signs of arousal: the heart
and breathing speed up, stress hormones are released, and our focus is high.

17 Once a story has sustained our attention long enough, we may begin to
emotionally resonate with story’s characters. Narratologists call this We like stories because we can
“transportation,” and you experience this when your palms sweat as James Bond connect with their characters.
trades blows with a villain on top of a speeding train.

18 Transportation is an amazing neural feat. We watch a flickering image that we Why do stories we know are
know is fictional, but evolutionarily old parts of our brain simulate the emotions fictional make us empathetic
we intuit James Bond must be feeling. And we begin to feel those emotions, too. with the characters?

Stories bring brains together

19 Emotional simulation is the foundation for empathy and is particularly

powerful for social creatures like humans because it allows us to rapidly forecast
if people around us are angry or kind, dangerous or safe, friend or foe.
The writer uses scientific
20 Such a neural mechanism keeps us safe but also allows us to rapidly form language so we trust them
more.
relationships with a wider set of members of our species than any other animal
does. The ability to quickly form relationships allows humans to engage in the
kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans Stories allow us to connect
into space. By knowing someone’s story—where they came from, what they do, emotionally with others.
and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.

21 We have identified oxytocin as the neurochemical responsible for empathy

and narrative transportation. My lab pioneered the behavioral study of oxytocin
How do they measure this?
and has proven that when the brain synthesizes oxytocin, people are more
trustworthy, generous, charitable, and compassionate. I have dubbed oxytocin the
“moral molecule,” and others call it the love hormone. What we know is that
oxytocin makes us more sensitive to social cues around us. In many situations, This also helps form
social cues motivate us to engage to help others, particularly if the other person relationships.
seems to need our help.

22 When people watch Ben’s story in the lab—and they both maintain attention
to the story and release oxytocin—nearly all of these individuals donate a portion Corroborates the findings that
oxytocin makes you more
of their earnings from the experiment. They do this even though they don’t have
charitable.
to.

23 This is surprising since this payment is to compensate them for an hour of

their time and two needle sticks in their arms to obtain blood from which we
measure chemical changes that come from their brains.

How we learn through stories

24 But it turns out that not all stories keep our attention and not all stories
transport us into the characters’ worlds.
25 We ran another experiment that featured Ben and his father at the zoo to find
out why. I should mention that Ben was really a boy with cancer who has now
died, and the featured father is really his father. In the zoo video, there is no
They’re trying to see if a less
mention of cancer or death, but Ben is bald and his father calls him “miracle
sad story gets the same
boy.” This story had a flat structure, rather than one with rising tension like the emotional response as the other
previous story. Ben and his father look at a giraffe, Ben skips ahead to look at the one.
rhino, Ben’s father catches up. We don’t know why we are watching Ben and his
father, and we are unsure what we are supposed to learn.
It didn’t resonate with the
26 People who watched this story began tuning out mid-way through. That is, audience and hold their
their scarce attention shifted from the story to scanning the room or thinking attention like the other version.
about what to buy at the grocery store after the experiment concluded. Measures Building ethos with the
of physiologic arousal waned and the empathy-transportation response did not scientific language.
occur. These participants also did not offer much in the way of donations to
charity.
This is why the second story
about Ben and his father
27 This evidence supports the view of some narrative theorists that there is a
couldn’t keep the audience’s
universal story structure. These scholars claim every engaging story has this attention, it lacked a dramatic
structure, called the dramatic arc. It starts with something new and surprising, arc.
and increases tension with difficulties that the characters must overcome, often
because of some failure or crisis in their past, and then leads to a climax where
the characters must look deep inside themselves to overcome the looming crisis,
and once this transformation occurs, the story resolves itself.

28 This is another reason why we look at car accidents. Maybe the person who
survived did something that saved his or her life. Or maybe the driver made a
mistake that ended in injury or death. We need to know this information.

How stories connect us with strangers

29 We also tested why stories can motivate us, like the characters in them, to
look inside ourselves and make changes to become better people. This reminds me of something
I heard in AP Psych, helping
30 Those who donated after watching Ben’s story had more empathic concern of others is a way to slow the
other people and were happier than those who did not donate money. This shows effects of stress.
there is a virtuous cycle in which we first engage with others emotionally that
leads to helping behaviors, that make us happier. Many philosophical and
religious traditions advocate caring for strangers, and our research reveals why
these traditions continue to influence us today—they resonate with our evolved
brain systems that make social interactions rewarding.

31 The form in which a narrative is told also seems to matter. The narrative Having a visual is important to
theorist Marshall McLuhan famously wrote in the 1960s that “the medium is the get the same emotional
message,” and we’ve found this is true neurologically. The video showing Ben response.
with his father talking on camera is better at both sustaining attention and causing
empathic transportation than when people simply read what Ben’s father has to
say themselves. This is good news for Hollywood filmmakers and tells us why
He’s gonna tell the reader why
we cry at sad movies but cry less often when reading a novel. they should care.
32 Does any of this matter to you?

33 We’ve recently used the knowledge we’ve developed to test stories that seek This is a similar experiment to
the Ben video one, but it could
to motivate positive behavioral changes. In a recent experiment, participants
be more impactful to the
watched 16 public-service ads from the United Kingdom that were produced by reader.
various charities to convince people not to drink and drive, text and drive, or use
drugs. We used donations to the featured charities to measure the impact of the This backs up the earlier
ads. statements made about the
effects of oxytocin.
34 In one version of this experiment, if we gave participants synthetic oxytocin Zak uses data to back up the
(in the nose, that will reach the brain in an hour), they donated to 57 percent studies findings. This is him
more of the featured charities and donated 56 percent more money than using logos.
participants given a placebo. Those who received oxytocin also reported more
emotional transportation into the world depicted in the ad. Most importantly,
these people said they were less likely to engage in the dangerous behaviors
shown in the ads.

35 So, go see a movie and laugh and cry. It’s good for your brain, and just might
motivate you to make positive changes in your life and in others’ lives as well.

Part II. Write a 4-sentence rhetorical precis that reflects Zak’s article.

Sentence 1: Paul Zak, in the article “How Stories Change the Brain,” (2013) suggests that humans are drawn to
stories because they allow us to be social and connect with others.

Sentence 2: Zak supports his suggestion by describing what neural processes occur when we watch or listen to
stories all while using evidence mainly from the findings of his own laboratory.

Sentence 3: The author’s purpose is to point out that we emotionally connect with other people when we hear
stories in order to present the opportunity for them to make a positive change in their life.

Sentence 4: The author writes in an informal tone to an audience of people interested in how the mind works to
tell them the value storytelling has on our social and emotional health.

Paul Zak, in the article “How Stories Change the Brain,” (2013) suggests that humans are drawn to stories
because they allow us to be social and connect with others. Zak supports his suggestion by describing what
neural processes occur when we watch or listen to stories all while using evidence mainly from the findings of
his own laboratory. The author’s purpose is to point out that we emotionally connect with other people when we
hear stories in order to present the opportunity for them to make a positive change in their life. The author
writes informally to an audience of people interested in how the mind works to tell them the value storytelling
has on our social and emotional health.