TedX Talk – Why is Storytelling so powerful?

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Translator: Florencia Bracamonte Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
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In 2009, a man, a journalist by the name Rob Walker,
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wanted to find out this:
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Is storytelling really the most powerful tool of all?
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And in order to do this,
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he went on his computer, and he bought 200 objects from eBay.
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And the average price of the objects was about one dollar.
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He then called 200 authors, and he asked them,
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"Hey, would you like to be part of the 'significant object study'?
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Which means that I would like you to write a story to one of the objects."
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And 200 authors said yes.
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So there he had 200 objects, he had 200 stories,
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and I assume that it was with nail-biting anticipation
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that he went on eBay again with all the 200 objects.
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Would there be a difference? Would there be a change?
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Do you think there was a change?
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One of the objects was this,
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this beautiful horse's head.
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There we go.
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The beautiful horse's head.
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Now, this beautiful horse's head was bought for 99¢
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and was sold, when the story was added, for $62.95.
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(Laughter)
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That is a slight increase of 6395%.
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So, was this a one-off situation?
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Not really,
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because he bought the 200 objects for a total of $129,
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selling them for $8000.
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Now, that's insane.
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But you know what's even more intellectually challenging to understand?
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How can you and I
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go to the movies and pay good money to watch movies like James Bond,
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[that] are absolutely unrealistic?
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And we sit there; we enjoy the movie.
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And some of us, we really enjoy the movie.
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And we leave the theater, going like, "God, what a man!
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I would like to be more like him.
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I'd like to walk like him. I'd like to talk like him.
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I like Bond.
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(Laughter)
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I wonder how I could be more like Bond."
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And then this weird revelation hits you like from nowhere,
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and you come up with a brilliant idea to walk to a watchmaker shop.
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And wow! It just happens to be an Omega watch in that shop
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that resembles the one that Bond was wearing in the movie.
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And you pay $10,000 to put that watch on your wrist.
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And you leave that store feeling more like Bond.
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How is that possible?
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PQ Media tells us that 10.5 billion dollars
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is turned over in product placement revenue every single year.
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How is it possible for you to be so easily tricked
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by something so simple as a story?
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Because you are tricked.
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Well, it all comes down to one core thing,
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and that is emotional investment.
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The more emotionally invested you are in anything in your life,
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the less critical and the less objectively observant you become.
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And the greatest emotional investment of all
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is falling in love.
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Now, falling in love resembles a good story.
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Do you remember the last time you fell in love?
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Yeah? Good for you. It's a beautiful feeling, isn't it?
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(Laughter)
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Do you remember how you longed and how you yearned and how you dreamt?
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Then you looked at her, and maybe you thought,
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"God, I love the way you chew that apple -
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so crunchy.
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(Laughter)
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And the way you slurp that tea, just over the edge, you know.
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Oh, it's so sexy.
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Love it!"
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And then about 13 months later, when you biochemically fall out of love -
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13 months later, on an average, you fall out of love -
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suddenly you find yourself sitting in the sofa, and you go,
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"Jesus Christ, where did this thing come from?
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Oh my God! And where are my friends?
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This is a weird thing."
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Then suddenly you hear a sound; you go like, "What's that?"
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You go over to the kitchen, and you look, and you go like,
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"Oh, it's you! You're eating an apple there.
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Could you just keep that down just a little bit?
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You're kind of spraying the table there.
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Please, please don't."
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And you sit down comfortably again,
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and just a minute later,
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you hear somebody drinking tea from the kitchen, going (Slurp).
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And suddenly, this is all annoying to you.
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Have you been there?
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Sadly enough,
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13 months later,
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our critical thinking and our cortex comes home from a one-year-long vacation,
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and we start questioning things.
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During those 13 months, what happened was that your brain was flooded
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with neurotransmitters and hormones hijacking your cortex,
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throwing your objectively observant skills out of the window.
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And the thing with storytelling is that the same thing can happen.
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In stories, the same hormones and neurotransmitters can be released.
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Hormones like vasopressin, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins.
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And you know what?
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That's what I would like to do during my talk.
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I would like to induce three hormones into your brain.
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I call it "the angels' cocktail," so it's a nice cocktail.
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I would like to start with radically increasing your dopamine levels.
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And I need your consent on this.
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Is it okay?
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Cool.
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And if you don't like the idea of that, you'll just have to cover your ears.
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So, dopamine. This is what it looks like.
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And when you have that in your blood, these are the beautiful effects:
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you get more focus, more motivation, and you remember things in a better way.
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So what does dopamine feel like? It feels like this.
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About six years ago, I received a phone call from a woman
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who represented one of the biggest training companies in Scandinavia,
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and she said, "Hey, David!
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We've got a lot of trainers in presentation skills and in rhetorics,
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and we'd like to increase the level of all of these,
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and we think you are a perfect pick.
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Would you like to come to a meeting?"
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I'm like, "Wow, I'm honored. I'd love to."
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And I come up to Stockholm, and I'm going to their office,
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and just as I am going to pull the handle down,
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what I don't know then
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is that I'm walking into one of the absolute worst meetings
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I'm ever going to have in my life.
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But I don't know that yet, so it's okay.
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I open the door, and I meet this woman.
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Her name is Liana.
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And hurriedly she says, "David, just so you know,
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I'm not the one you're having this meeting with;
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you're going to have it with three gentlemen, further on here."
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And I'm like, "Okay, that's a bit strange."
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Usually you know who you're going to have the meeting with.
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Then she progresses with a bit of chit-chatting,
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and then suddenly she says, "Are you ready now?"
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And I'm like, "Yeah, what should I be ready for?"
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She says, "Just so you know - Can you see the room over there?"
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And I go like, "Yes, I can see it."
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"Well, in that room you have the three gentlemen.
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Just so you know, they're all majority owners of this company.
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They've all got an ex-military background,
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and none of them wants the training that you are going to pitch."
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(Laughter)
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I'm like, "Come on!
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Why am I here?"
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And it's like, "Well, all the trainers want this,
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but the management are on too high horses.
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They can't see that they need it.
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So it's pretty simple.
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The only thing you have to do is go in there and kind of, you know,
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just prove the opposite."
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I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds simple, doesn't it?"
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And I can remember myself, I'm walking towards this office,
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my sweat is coming down my palms, my heart is racing,
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and just halfway there, she calls my name.
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And I still, to this day,
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don't know if this woman is sadomasochistic
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or just downright unintelligent.
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Because she calls my name, and she goes like, "David!"
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It's like I'm going to get the tip or something like that,
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so I turn around to ask her,
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and she says the following -
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And if I don't tell you what she says there, is that annoying?
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(Laughter)
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Well, actually, as an example, I'm not going to do that.
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I just wanted to prove to you what it feels with high dopamine levels.
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Would you say that your focus was increased?
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Your attention was increased?
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You were creative; you created situations around this,
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and you probably already figured out what that room looked like, correct?
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And you'll remember that I did that to you for quite a while.
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Now, the feeling you had there
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was high levels of dopamine, which is beautiful.
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So how do you do that?
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Well, what you do is you build suspense,
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you launch a cliffhanger,
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and the most beautiful thing of all
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is that all storytelling is, per definition, dopamine-creating
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because it's always something that we're waiting and expecting.
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So just imagine, just by using storytelling you can get those techniques.
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You don't have to do a cliffhanger like I did.
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So that was the first hormone.
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I'd now like to go to oxytocin.
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Is that okay as well? I'll induce that?
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All right.
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The beautiful effects of oxytocin are the following:
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you become more generous, you trust me more, and you bond to me.
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You want to do that?
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All right.
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All right, so this was a ...
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Nine months had passed,
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and it was a planned caesarean.
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And the little brother, who was 5 years of age at that point of time,
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he was kind of really looking forward to what's going to be -
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what's going to happen.
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He was going to become a big brother.
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And he had helped us pick out the wallpaper,
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he'd helped choose the bed linen.
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He'd even saved his own pocket money to buy a little stuffed animal,
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which was placed on the pillowcase.
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About two days before the planned cesarean,
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something happened.
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Something wasn't right.
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The parents couldn't - something was off.
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And the day before, there was simply no movement in the stomach,
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there was no heartbeat.
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You couldn't feel or hear anything at all.
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So the parents were rushed into hospital,
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laid down on a bed,
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and doctor comes in, checks the stomach,
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looks at me and sees what I see,
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and that is that the heart is no longer beating for this child.
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This was me, nine years ago.
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It was the worst thing I've ever experienced in my entire life.
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And, I don't know, can you just imagine what you have to tell a five -
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how you tell that to a five-year-old?
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Can you just imagine that?
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Because he's home there, waiting in anticipation for this coming event.
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But it won't happen.
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So a part of me and to handle that,
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I talk about it.
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And I've talked to you about it now.
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And now you got higher levels of oxytocin in your blood,
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whether you want it or not,
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which means that you feel more human;
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you're bonding to me, and you're feeling more relaxed.
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So how do you do that?
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In storytelling, you create empathy.
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So whatever character you build, you create empathy for that character.
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And oxytocin is the most beautiful hormone of all
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because you feel human.
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The third, and last, hormone is endorphin,
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and I would like to show you a woman
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which, we can say, has overdosed on endorphins.
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Let's just look what that looks like.
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Ah, we'll go here.
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(Video) Priest: To inspire and to respond ...
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(Muffled laughter)
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Are you speaking or listening?
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(Laughter)
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Woman: To speak and to listen.
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(Laughter)
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I'm sorry.
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Okay, um, to speak and to listen?
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Priest: To inspire and to respond.
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Woman: To inspire and to respond.
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Priest: And in all circumstances
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Woman: (Laughter)
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Woman: And in all circumstances
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Priest: Of our life together
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Woman: (Laughter)
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Woman: I'm sorry - of our life together
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Of our life together
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Priest: To be loyal to you with my whole life and all my being
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Woman: To be loyal to you with my whole life and all my being
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Priest: Until death parts us. Woman: Until death parts us.
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Woman and Man: (Laughter)
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(Audience) (Laughter)
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Oh, the timing of that is so lousy, isn't it?
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So how do you create endorphins? Well, you make people laugh.
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What happens then is that they become more creative, they become more relaxed,
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and again, they become more focused, which is beautiful to have.
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Now, all these three hormones that I've induced into your brain now
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is what I call "the angels' cocktail."
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But there is an opposite of that cocktail, and I call that '"the devil's cocktail."
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And the devil's cocktail has high levels of cortisol and adrenalin.
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And they feel like this.
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(Quick yell)
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(Laughter)
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Sorry to do that to you.
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So, high levels of cortisol and adrenaline.
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The problem with that is that if you've got really high concentrations -
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which I didn't give you there -
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but when you've got high concentrations, look at this:
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[Intolerant, Irritable, Uncreative, Critical, Memory impaired, Bad decisions]
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Is this something that you want to have the people you talk to
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have in their blood, in their system?
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Now, in our stressful work lives, in our stressful lives,
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many times, when you present, communicate, deliver meetings,
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Which one do you think they've drunk most of?
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The devil's cocktail or the angels' cocktail?
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Most commonly, the devil's cocktail.
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And the problem then is that you've got all this to work against.
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But all of that can change today.
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All of that can change
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by you starting to use something I call functional storytelling.
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And functional storytelling means that you do these three things:
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One, you have to understand that you don't have to be a bearded old man
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in front of a fireplace with a dark voice in order to be a great storyteller.
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In my experience, when I train people,
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everybody is a good storyteller from birth.
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The only problem is that you don't believe in it.
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The second thing is write down your stories.
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You'll notice that you have three to four times more stories in your life
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than you thought that you had.
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Three, index those stories.
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Which of your stories make people laugh, i.e. create endorphins?
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Which make people feel empathy, i.e. oxytocin?
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And the next time you go into a meeting,
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you pick the story you want to release the hormone you wish
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in the person that you're talking to
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to get exactly the desired effects that you want.
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And that's a beautiful thing.
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Now, you know me, some of you know me as "Mr. Death by PowerPoint."
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I want to round off with making my point very clear.
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And my point is this:
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100 000 years ago, we started developing our language.
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It's sound to say that we started using storytelling to transfer knowledge
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from generation to generation.
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27 000 years ago, we started transferring knowledge from generation to generation
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through cave paintings.
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3 500 years ago, we started transferring knowledge from generation to generation
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through text.
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28 years ago, PowerPoint was born.
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Which one do you think our brain is mostly adapted to?
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)