Why Do We Love Stories?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are that you’ve got that one TV show or movie that you can never stop watching, maybe a book that you can’t seem to put down-- perhaps there’s even a character that you feel resembles yourself. Well luckily for you, there is a scientific reason behind all of it!

Oxytocin: The Love Hormone

Before hopping into the big picture of the effects of storytelling on the brain, we’re first going to talk about the tiny molecule behind it all: oxytocin.

Oxytocin is a hormone consisting of 9 amino acids which exists as a free polypeptide chain in the blood circulation. It’s produced in a brain region called the paraventricular nucleus, located in the hypothalamus, and is secreted into the bloodstream by the posterior pituitary gland. Secretion depends on electrical activity of neurons in the hypothalamus – it is released into the blood when these cells are excited.

For the most part, releasing oxytocin requires one thing: another person. While it’s traditionally associated with sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth, almost any form of social bonding or positive physical contact can trigger oxytocin to be released. One study on chimpanzees even found that sharing a meal does the trick.

 

Oxytocin’s main function is to facilitate childbirth in women, which is one of the reasons it is called the “love hormone,” and it does so through stimulating uterine muscles to contract and also increases production of prostaglandin through a positive feedback mechanism. However, oxytocin is also related to attachment and social-related behaviors associated with activity in our brains.

 

In the brain, oxytocin acts as a chemical messenger to stimulate many human behaviors including recognition, trust, romantic attachment, and bonding--more reasons for why it has been called the “love hormone.” Furthermore, oxytocin increases a sense of empathy among individuals.

Diagram of The Brain and Parts Responsible for Oxytocin

 

All About Empathy

Empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. This is particularly helpful for social creatures like humans because it allows us to determine if people around us are angry or kind, dangerous or safe, friend or foe. 

Empathy seems to have deep roots in our brains and bodies, and in our evolutionary history as well. Empathy makes us reach out to others, first just emotionally, but later in life also by understanding their situation. This capacity likely evolved because it served our ancestors’ survival in two ways. First, like every mammal, we need to be sensitive to the needs of our offspring. Second, our species depends on cooperation, which means that we do better if we are surrounded by healthy, capable group mates. Taking care of them is just a matter of enlightened self-interest. Elementary forms of empathy have even been observed in our primate relatives, in dogs, and even in rats.

 

Scientists have speculated that some aspects of empathy can be traced to mirror neurons, cells in the brain that fire when we observe someone else perform an action in much the same way that they would fire if we performed that action ourselves. Research has also uncovered evidence of a genetic basis to empathy. Heritability of two different subcomponents of empathy have been studied: affective empathy, or a person’s ability to feel what someone else is feeling, and cognitive empathy, or a person’s ability to understand another person’s feelings and reasoning. Based on the results of these tests, it's estimated that affective empathy is between 52-57 percent heritable and cognitive empathy is about 27 percent heritable, presumably influenced more by environment and learning experiences.

To read more about the evolution of empathy, check out this blog post!

The Evolution of Empathy

Putting it all together: The Science Behind Storytelling

So, the question to be asked now is: How does this all relate to our interest in storytelling??

When we hear stories from other people, the same sensory centers in both of our brains are used. According to a study conducted by neuroscientists at Princeton University, “Communication is a shared activity resulting in a transfer of information across brains…[D]uring successful communication, speakers’ and listeners’ brains exhibit joint, temporally coupled, response patterns.” These neuroscientists found that when listening to a well-told story, the exact same areas of the brain light up on an MRI in both the storyteller and listener. In other words, your brain, as the listener, mirrors the brain of the storyteller.

Including stories told through movies, TV shows, books, etc., once a narrative has sustained our attention long enough, we may begin to emotionally resonate with the story's characters. Narratologists call this “transportation.” To experience narrative transportation, the audience should experience empathy with the characters. Social psychologists Geoff Kaufman and Lisa Libby argue that when audiences take the perspectives and experiences of the characters in the story, they “lose themselves and assume the identity of the character, adopting the character’s thoughts, emotions, goals, traits, and actions and experiencing the narrative as though they were that character.”

When we hear a story that best resonates with us, our levels of oxytocin increase and makes the brain’s reward centers more responsive to social contact (also resulting in an increase in empathy), which is one of the reasons why we have favorite TV shows or books.

Transportation truly is an amazing neural concept! We become invested in a story, even though we aren’t observing/experiencing it firsthand (and it may even be fictional), and our empathy mimics the emotions we imagine the characters must be feeling. We then begin to feel those emotions ourselves! Some of the most famous characters stick with us because we empathize with their experiences, whether that is the feeling of shock when Darth Vader reveals to Luke that he’s his father, or excitement when Elle Woods wins her court case.

So, the next time you watch literally any Pixar movie, blame your inevitable tears on your brain’s ability to take you into another person’s shoes.

 

Empathy: Sharing Emotions

The Pixar Movie That I Always Cry At

A Funny "Empath" Meme!