This is Part 3 of a series on storytelling.
In the “Arabian Nights” (The Thousand and One Nights) story collection, a young Persian queen named Scheherazade prevents the king’s plans to execute her by telling a succession of stories so enthralling that the king doesn’t want to miss the endings. In “The Crow and the Pitcher,” one of Aesop’s fables, a thirsty crow can’t reach the water in a tall jug, so it drops pebbles into the jug until the water rises to its beak. In tales of the Trojan War, the Greeks pretend to abandon their two-year siege on Troy but leave a wooden horse full of soldiers behind to pass within Troy’s gates and attack as the city sleeps. The world is full of tales—both true and fictional—where doing things in an expected manner just doesn’t cut it. What is needed—and what ends up winning the day for those who wield it—is creativity, and these stories are perfect vessels for capturing that creativity.
Creativity and storytelling are like human superpowers when leveraged appropriately. Both can drive innovations or solutions that are “outside the box” of what is expected, and often never even seen before. These superpowers are getting extra attention in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), as AI provides answers and solutions based on what was, whereas only creativity and storytelling can lead us to what might potentially be. But something called storythinking—crucial to both creativity and storytelling—doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. I had the pleasure of interviewing an expert on this topic: Sarah Lagrotteria, who earned her MA at Stanford and is the chief educator at Just Bloom School—a research-based organization using neuroscience and narrative theory to develop human creativity, intelligence, and resilience.
Jenny Rankin: What exactly is storythinking, and how does it relate to the way human brains evolved to function?
Sarah Lagrotteria: Storythinking is the process by which our brains think narratively. Our brains evolved to think in two ways: logically and narratively. Put very simply, the logic-thinking part of our brain, where math and symbolic thinking begin, evolved to spot predators in the environment. The storythinking part of our brain, which responds to surprise and wonder by asking why? and wondering what next?, evolved to hatch an escape plan so we could evade that predator.
JR: Who do you teach to use storythinking, and why?
SL: We work with groups as diverse as U.S. Army Special Operations, elementary students, and Fortune 50 businesses and partner with the American Camp Association. Why? Because everyone benefits when we grow our creativity. We all think of story as an end product, something a creative person writes or tells. But our research shows that thinking in story is what drives creativity. Going back to that escape plan, generating new stories ensures our survival and keeps us creating new plans for our future. For those in high-pressure, volatile environments like military officers and business leaders, the human ability to think in story enables them to outplan computer intelligence (AI) and continually adapt around challenges, thriving where others fail.
JR: How do elementary students respond to this?
SL: For me, a high point in our work was testing the same methods we use with the military and businesses with elementary students in our home district. We ran a study in partnership with The Ohio State University’s School of Education which tested whether Storythinking could reverse what’s known as the creativity crisis. The creativity crisis refers to the fact that the longer you are in school in this country, the less creative you become. We’ve known this for more than 30 years, which is shocking. That decline in creativity begins right around third/fourth grade, which is also the point at which school becomes much more logic-based, teaching kids to think more like computers do. The focus shifts, for example, to readying students for multiple choice assessments as opposed to imagining new solutions or to reading for information as opposed to role-playing. Kids are suddenly incentivized to think logically and there are fewer opportunities and little time for them to think in story. Our theory is that prioritizing logic-based education to the near exclusion of storythinking is what led to and upholds that decline in creativity and resilience.
JR: What impact does the storythinking skill have on those who learn to use it?
SL: Studies have shown that it is a powerful tool for significantly and substantially boosting creativity, emotional and psychological resilience, and self-efficacy (the belief that you can solve your own problems) across populations. Plus, the benefits are holistic. If you’re able to come up with new and different solutions at work or at school, you’re likely to do the same at home, which benefits your relationships.
JR: What is a sample strategy that can help people leverage storythinking?
SL: The simplest strategy is to spend time reading biographies and memoirs of people who think differently than you do. Not so you can find ways to relate to them, but so you can understand what makes them different. This forces a perspective shift in your brain that you can then take a step further. Once you’ve identified what makes them different, imagine—even just for a minute or so— how they would act in your life. Imagining different and unexpected, but valid, action plans opens your brain to more possibilities and sets you on the path toward a more creative, resilient life.