The Neuroscience of Story, Part 2: Chemical Trifecta
Long story shortest. Stories trigger three primary chemicals in our brains: cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin—an intensely powerful combination.
(If you haven’t read part one, I’d recommend doing that now.)
About six years ago, I started developing stress hives. Out of nowhere. I was hosting a live storytelling event, and things started going awry—two storytellers didn’t show, a microphone quit working, one of the stories shared that night turned out to be covertly problematic, and so on. Suddenly, my hairline started itching a lot. Then behind my ears. Then on top of my head. By the end of the night, red hives covered my face. The sight of them stressed me out even more. By the time I got home, the hives had covered my body. I applied anti-itch cream everywhere and immersed myself in an oatmeal bath. After a while, the pain and itching dissipated, and relief began to pour over me.
My body has an unhelpfully exaggerated response to intense stress; it basically shuts down. Hopefully, you don’t share this misery. But what you do share is a dislike of stress. Everyone does. Our brains simply don’t like stress. It feels really uncomfortable—usually tense, maybe jittery or perhaps frozen still, anxious, could be hyper-focused or dulled. The brain and body respond to stress in all kinds of ways; none of them fun.
And because our brains don’t like stress, stress does serve a critical purpose, like motivating us to flee from fire, or to turn off Episode I, II, or III of the Star Wars movies and make different life choices. The brain wants relief from stress, like how I felt after the oatmeal bath that night. The pleasure of relaxation after stress is often significantly more amazing than before stress, because the pleasure is now contrasted with the gross feeling we had while hyperventilating about Jar Jar Binks. (My apologies to anyone who doesn’t get the reference.)
What’s all this got to do with storytelling? Turns out, a whole lot.
Stories trigger three primary chemicals in our brains: cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin. This trifecta is an intensely powerful combination, and I’ll tell you why.
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DISCLAIMER: I’m not a neuroscientist. If you, dear reader, are, then I apologize. This is going to be a painfully simplistic explanation of what I’m confident is complex neuroscience. Read on at your own risk of hair-pulling.
First, a loose definition of each:
Cortisol — the stress chemical. Whenever you are feeling stressed, uncomfortable, or tense, you have cortisol in your brain.
Dopamine — the pleasure chemical. Your brain releases this when you, for instance, eat food you love, experience resolution to a conflict, or recognize something familiar.
Oxytocin — the bonding chemical. This chemical enters the picture when you hug someone you care about, laugh with someone, or anything else that encourages bonding and connection.
So, here’s what happens when you hear a story.
Core to any story is conflict (I’ll say a lot more on this in a future post). And once that conflict enters, so does the cortisol. The moment we start asking, “What’s going to happen next?” we have bits of cortisol in our brains. We don’t like the feeling of living in unknowns. Evolutionarily, that’s because not knowing if that rustling in the trees was a squirrel or a sabertooth tiger was the difference between living or dying. We like patterns, stability, resolution. Therefore, as soon as we don’t know what to expect in a story (which is generally pretty quickly), cortisol makes an appearance. And now, we are waiting for the resolution that will make it go away. That’s why we keep listening.
When that resolution finally arrives, our brain releases dopamine. Now we’re feeling good. Our brains very wisely evolved to release dopamine for life-giving experiences, like eating, sex, and stories. Stories are necessary for survival, and so they feel good to us when they resolve. Every time we get hooked on a story, we are in fact listening in hope that a dopamine-infused resolution is around the corner. And when it’s not, we generally don’t take it well.
Finally, oxytocin. This is the chemical that enables us to empathize with characters, to develop compassion and trust. When a storyteller gifts us with emotionally-rich characters, we begin to connect to them. We empathize. We align. We resist. We love. We hate. This emotional connection keeps us engaged in the story. I remember when I was in college and first introduced my parents to The West Wing. They devoured all seven seasons (who wouldn’t??). After the series finale, my mom called me to deliver the sad news, “It’s over. We finished The West Wing.”
“You sound devastated,” I said.
“I am,” she half-joked. “I’m going to miss seeing my friends every night!” The “friends,” of course, were President Bartlett, CJ, Josh, and the whole crew. Aaron Sorkin wrote an emotionally compelling story, with extraordinary character development. The result - my mom had a bunch of oxytocin in her brain.
Understanding this trifecta is key to unlocking the maximum impact a story can deliver. When you can successfully produce all three of these in your listeners’ brains, your power to mold minds and inspire action is nearly limitless. Much more on this later.
