Why Stories Sell and Why Barak Loves Them

The story of stories is starting to take root in the public consciousness, and more and more science is now showing us why exactly people relate to stories so much. Turns out there are a specific class of neurons that are specifically wired to respond to stories.

In a recent article in FastCompany, Dr. Marco Iacoboni‘s work is detailed, showing just how and why humans and their brains are so strongly attracted to stories.

Turns out that the very first way people communicated information with each other was via stories. Then, guess what? The people with more information were the survivors and were, thus, more able to reproduce.

Over time, this means that humanity selected for story sensitivity.

Which is why, today, audiences tend to glaze over during PowerPoint presentations that have no narrative structure–people just aren’t designed to respond well to lists of fact and figures or unstructured information.

No story means much mess interest on the part of your audience. Give people a reason to care, a beginning, middle, and end, and they will not only care but be interested, and actually remember your pitch later.

Wouldn’t that be nice?