Why Stories Are the Best Way to Communicate

July 1994, EPCOT Center, Florida: Opening day of Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride.

The boy's name was Billy and he had just volunteered from the audience to experience Disney’s first Virtual Reality (VR) ride at an exhibit of future technologies at the Innoventions Pavillion.

Or rather, Billy’s mother had volunteered him when we asked if anyone present wanted to try the wheelchair compatible version of the ride that we had installed next to three other ride stations on the exhibit stage.

As Billy’s mother pushed him up the ramp to the stage in his small wheelchair, I watched him closely to determine if his particular disability might cause him unusual discomfort, given that VR made some people dizzy or nauseous.

Watching Billy in his wheelchair as he came onto the stage, I decided he probably had Cerebral Palsy, but couldn’t think of a reason why that condition would cause him any unusual problems. So I showed the mother where to position Billy, how to put on the head-mounted display and how to control his magic carpet.

But, just to be sure Billy wouldn’t suffer any ill effects, as the experience began, and Billy started to “fly” through the enchanting city of Agrabah, I kept my hand ready to push the panic button that would instantly kill the ride at the first sign of trouble.

And indeed, trouble did come 40 seconds into the ride when Billy started sobbing and shouting. My hand was on its way to the panic button when I felt a strong grip on my wrist. Billy’s mother had stopped me: In an urgent whisper, she said: “Let him go. Those are tears of joy. It’s the first time in his entire life he’s been free of that wheelchair.”

I told this story frequently when recruiting technologists for Disney Imagineering by observing that Billy’s experience showed that at Disney Imagineering, we did not just create theme parks, we created hope.

The storytelling method of explaining our mission to recruits often worked, not only because it spoke to the heart more than the mind, but also because it tapped into the brain’s most potent way of taking in and understanding information: stories.

Neuroscientist Ye Yuan and colleagues at McMaster University recently found—by studying which parts of the brain “lit up” on a functional Magnetic Resonance Imager (fMRI) when stories were presented to subjects—that we all have a “narrative hub” in the brain, consisting of a connected network of different parts of the cerebral cortex. From their own work, and that of other neuroscientists, Yuan’s team concluded that the “narrative hub” of cortical systems is part of what is often called “the theory of mind” parts of the brain, where we infer thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others from their actions and words.

In other words, when we see or hear a story, we project ourselves into the mind and heart of the main character of that story and think and feel what we believe that character thinks and feels.

Our brain’s natural tendency to “mentalize” a story this way probably evolved, Yuan asserts, so that we can better understand another person’s written or spoken communication by “becoming” the object in object/subject sentences.

Indeed, Yuan and the other McMaster neuroscientists speculate that the very structure of human language, in which an “object” (usually a human) performs an action (verb) on a subject (a noun), is inherently narrative in nature and that the brain's narrative hub evolved as an essential component of the way our brain understands language.

This makes sense when you think about it: We learn and understand new concepts far better and faster when doing something ourselves vs. simply being told what to do. So, by mentally becoming the actor in a story, we are effectively doing vs. merely listening, and we are much more likely to grasp the “point” of the story.

So, the next time you need to get a point across, embed your message in a simple story that shows, rather than tells, what you wish to communicate.

When you do this, you may discover that—like Billy—the awesome power of storytelling can set you free from whatever limits you.