Changing Minds with the Power of Story Telling
When selecting the topic to begin Leap two, I was quite stuck and I did not resonate with most of the topics. I really wanted to research something that I was interested in.I flipped between topic after topic and explored the Courageous Rhode Island website. I spent a time on each topic and tried to draw inspiration from the sites hoping that something would strike me. It was not until completing the module for this week that I was inspired. Reading through chapter six I found myself enjoying the material and engaging with the lesson. After watching “How Stories shape our minds” I knew I was going to talk about the influence that stories have on one. The video was very inspiring and it filled me with so many questions to base my research off of. I loved learning about the subconscious effects that stories have on us and just how convincing they truly can be. From this point I had met with my Partner Emily Jefrey and we had both agreed on doing our research on the Feelings and Facts category, choosing to focus on why stories, Characters, and conflicts change minds.
Our research began with reading through chapter six of the textbook and taking note of the topics and ideas that we had found vital to our thesis. We then came to the agreement that we were going to make an informative video for our media choice. By working together we collaboratively shared a Canva presentation where we began to implement the main ideas. Working our way through slide by slide we bounced ideas off of each other such as what topics to cover next or what our order should be when presenting in. Me and Emily have had many classes together in the past and lived in the same dorm building freshman year so we got along great and overall had a very collaborative and positive experience when working together for this LEAP. We were able to benefit each other with our input and helped each other find reputable sources,give examples and compose our information creatively.
When finding my research I was extremely intrigued on what makes a story compelling. We read through the chapter as well as used the internet to fully develop our ideas and to cover all the pieces of a compelling story. Starting with our first topic of the components of a story. By highlighting the seemingly basic ideas we were able to explain how these simple terms like,setting and plot truly play a large effect into storytelling. We used articles like What is a Theme of a Story by Robin Piree as well as What are the key elements of a story? By Ashley Crowe to help further our ideas and discussion on the main elements of a compelling story.
The next topic we wanted to focus on was the idea of what makes a character. Characters are the driving force behind the stories so we thought this was another extremely important topic to discuss. Our research on character studies came from Hannah Adams article titled “Fictional Characters’ Impact on My Life. I found Adam’s story very interesting and used a few experts from her publication in our presentation as she explains the influence that characters from her favorite books,movies and tv shows shaped who she is today. This is exactly what characters are meant to do and it is another aspect of storytelling that makes it so impactful and is what makes a story able to implement change in so many people’s lives. Another piece of research that I found extremely useful in character understanding was Bal, P Matthijs, and Martijn Veltkamp. “How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? This article was the first source I had found and I believed it truly shaped the idea of our LEAP project. It goes into so much detail about how fiction is so useful for producing empathy and the emotions that storytelling produces. From here I was able to tie my research into how much weight emotion has in decision making.
The research done by Moshe Ratson in The Power of Emotions in Decision Making is where I was able to tie together all of our ideas. Using the research done on characters,conflict,and story components we were able to draw that the story is able to provoke emotions and emotion is one of the driving factors in decision making. This is how stories, characters, and conflict change minds.
References
Adams, Hannah. “Fictional Characters’ Impact on My Life.” Bobcat Multimedia, 28 Sept. 2022, bobcatmultimedia.com/2975/thecolonnade/fictional-characters-impact-on-my-life/.
Bal, P Matthijs, and Martijn Veltkamp. “How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation.” PloS One, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 30 Jan. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559433/.
Crowe, Ashley. (2022, January 31). What are the key elements of a story?. prodigygame.com. https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/story-elements/
Edwards, Gina. “7 Types of Conflict in Literature: How to Use Them (with Examples).” ProWritingAid, 7 Aug. 2020, prowritingaid.com/art/1366/what-are-the-7-types-of-conflict-in-literature.aspx.
Hobbs, R. (2021). Media Literacy in Action: Questioning the Media. Rowman & Littlefield.
Piree, Robin. (2023, October 16). What is a Theme of a Story. Robin Piree. https://robinpiree.com/blog/theme-of-a-story#:~:text=A%20theme%20is%20the%20main,have%20more%20than%20one%20theme.
Ratson, Moshe. “The Power of Emotions in Decision Making.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 7 Aug. 2023, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-wisdom-of-anger/202308/the-power-of-emotions-in-decision-making.
Zak, Paul J. “How Stories Change the Brain.” Greater Good, 17 Dec. 2013, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain.
