The Pleasures and Perils of Storytelling

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Almost everyone loves a story - in fact, you could argue that we all do our best to turn any sequence of events into a narrative. But in our ever more complex world, our inclination to look for narratives may not be an advantage. When it comes to making sense of complex systems, say, a nation’s economy or the human body, our propensity for story-telling can become a snare, a trap which may incline us to see a narrative when none exists. Bridget Kendall is joined by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, whose research explores whether the habit of reading fiction may help hone our social skills; business consultant Thaler Pekar, who seeks out persuasive stories and teaches people how best to share them; and science writer and broadcaster Philip Ball, who explains that if complex data defies simple analysis, we probably need to abandon a narrative and look for a completely different kind of thinking. (Photo: Children sit around a nanny reading a story. Credit: Getty Images)