2010 - Public Relations Society of America

Physiology
“…your mind was evolutionary hardwired long before birth to think in specific
story terms” (Haven, 2007).
We are born with approximately 100 billion brain cells (neurons). Each cell
makes about 100,000 connections, called synapses (100 billion x 100,000 = 100 trillion
connections!). The more connections a neuron makes, the stronger the neuron becomes.
The more a connection fires, or is used, the stronger the bond becomes, turning this link
into a super-highway for information to travel. Connections that go unused die off or
become hard to access, like two-track pathways through the backwoods of the mind
(Haven 2007; Baker, 2003; Goleman, 1995). “Somehow, through this freeway maze of
links, loops, and electric traffic jams, we each manage to think, perceive, consider,
imagine, remember, react, and respond” (Haven, 2007).
Through the organic construction of this vital organ, what connections become the
strongest links and superhighways? Evolutionary biologists and other researchers who
perform clinical studies on infants confirm that, at birth, the human mind processes
information in story terms (Haven, 2007). It appears, hundreds of thousands of years of
ancestral storytelling has hardwired the brain in a very specific way. The structure of
story is how our brains are designed to internalize and interpret data before we even take
our first breath. Odd as it may sound, researchers all agree, we enter this life prepared to
understand the world through story.
As infants grow and develop, the story structure is reinforced. Not only are
newborns looking to make sense of their world through the story structure, but children
are constantly exposed to information in the form of story. During the most malleable and
important learning years of our lives, the story-based neural network is replicated,
reinforced, and solidified. “This dominance of story exposure through the key years of
brain plasticity results in adults irrevocably hardwired to think in story terms” (Haven,
2007, p. 27). Story works best because our brains are hardwired to process information
specifically as story.
Narrative as a Credible Resource
According to esteemed psychologist and research fellow at the New York
University School of Law, Dr. Jerome Bruner (1986), there are two primary modes of
cognitive functioning: argument and stories. They differ radically in their process, each
offering distinctive, yet valuable ways of ordering experience. Arguments verify truth
through singular, focused procedures of formal, empirical proof. Story establishes a
perspective of truth from many points of view.
This qualitative outlook is an extremely important process for explaining human
phenomenon. Author Mary Midgley (2001) agrees stating, there is no way we can collect
any significant aspect of life without viewing it from different angles. John Seely Brown,
former chief scientist at Xerox and well-known knowledge management guru, agrees
stating, “As a scientist, I moved from equations and formulas to artificial intelligence,
and from there to a growing appreciation of the power of the narrative -- the power of
realizing that generalities are different from abstraction” (Ruggles & Holtshouse, 1999, p.
ix).
Researcher, author, storyteller, and NASA consultant Kendall Haven (2007),
performed an exhaustive and comprehensive review of more than 100,000 pages of
quantitative and qualitative research from fifteen independent fields of study regarding
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