First a reminder of some concepts we have

used
 Risk perception gaps
• Risks as feelings versus technologically
modelled risk
 Two Modes of Thinking
(Paul Slovic et al Risk Analysis 2004)
(from week 4)

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 What you see is all there is

Kahneman 2011
 Feelings of Truthiness
not Truthfulness.

Kahneman 2011
 Narrative plots provide framing
• Overcoming the monster (James Bond)
• From rags to riches (Superman)
• The Quest (Lord of the Rings)

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Narratives are powerfully
persuasive flawed tools
David Tribe 2019
• Especially in today communication
environment, we need also to be more curious
about ideas that are about how people reason
• An old mindset of science seems to be
changing , partly because of our failures with
the first generation of GMOs.
 Concepts today
• Why talk about stories?
• Humans intuitively and effortlessly confabulate
explanatory narratives
• The brain’s confabulator has been identied
• Stories convince by truthiness
• Stories exploit emotional flow and a narrative arc
• Distinguishing features of narratives help explain their
biological function
• Stories have a dark side for explaining accurately how the
world works
 Bruner’s ideas about instructive stories

Cited by Lieblich, Amia, and Ruthellen Josselson.

"Identity and narrative as root metaphors of personhood.“
 The Psychology of Personhood: Philosophical, Historical,
Social‐Development and Narrative Perspectives (2013): 203-222.
 Humans instinctively and effortlessly realise
narratives that explain events that unfold
• Example Heider and Simmel 1944 animation
 The Brain’s story interpreter has been
located
• It’s behaviour can be very careless with
evidence
Suggested reading for this week from The
Story Telling Animal

17
Michael Gazzaniga’s work with split-brains
The left-brain interpreter

21
• What does confabulation mean?
 Verisimilitude, (truthiness)
• As I have argued extensively elsewhere, we organize our
experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the
form of narrative-stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and
not doing, and so on. Narrative is a conventional form, transmitted
culturally and constrained by each individual's level of mastery and
by his conglomerate of prosthetic devices, colleagues, and
mentors. Unlike the constructions generated by logical and
scientific procedures that can be weeded out by falsification,
narrative constructions can only achieve "verisimilitude."
Narratives, then, are a version of reality whose acceptability is
governed by convention and "narrative necessity" rather than by
empirical verification and logical requiredness,

(Bruner)
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 He says, "You have been in Afghanistan, I
perceive."
• Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the
air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then.
He has just come from the tropics, for his face is
dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for
his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and
sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm
has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural
manner. Where in the tropics could an English army
doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm
wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.
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Ten features of narratives (after Bruner)
• Run over time
• Refer to particular happenings (events in a story), but
this is the vehicle rather than their destination
• Are about people in a setting that is relevant to their
intentions (beliefs, desires, theories, values and so on)
and so provide moral advice
• Are a text from which a meaning can be extracted, but
extracted meanings can vary
• There is context sensitivity and negotiability—flexible
interpretation by the listener
 Ten Features of narrative
• Not every sequence of events is worth telling as a
N. Some are pointless. N. Are about an approved
(canonical) behaviour being breached
• Presupposes a norm.
• Resemble, refer, to the real world, but are not
necessarily faithful replicas
• There are recognisable genres : farce, tragedy,
romance, satire...
• Narratives add together to generate a culture
Narrative arc with emotional flow
Emotional flow can generate enduring persuasion
(and willing suspension of disbelief)
 The Dark Side of Stories
• Willing suspension of disbelief (emotional
transportation) is a two edged sword
 The Dark Side of Stories
• Willing suspension of disbelief (emotional
transportation) is a two edged sword
• The mind is over-impressed (and easily fooled)
with richly patterned detail
 The Dark Side of Stories
• Willing suspension of disbelief (emotional
transportation) is a two edged sword
• The mind is over-impressed (and easily fooled)
with richly patterned detail
• The brain’s interpreter can be very careless
with evidence
 Context (framing) suppresses ambiguity
(Wednesday week 7)
• In a world of imperfect information ambiguity
is common
• The human brain exploits context to rapidly
make sense of ambiguous information and
infer what is missing from the message
• Presentation context has crucial effects on
Interpretation of unfamiliar messages

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 The Dark Side of Stories
• Willing suspension of disbelief (emotional
transportation) is a two edged sword
• The mind is over-impressed (and easily fooled)
with richly patterned detail
• The brain’s interpreter can be very careless
with evidence