Chapter 4: Active Belief and Status
Will Storr, award-winning journalist and author of The Science of Storytelling and A Story is a Deal, has spent decades researching the links between storytelling, the human condition and our identities. In our new interview series, we speak to him to uncover how we can harness the power of our storytelling brains and unlock the full power of the story – in changing beliefs, driving action and achieving extraordinary results. Here, he discusses active belief and status.
Never Miss A Story
Read the transcript of the film:
It’s not enough to simply connect within our human groups. We’ve got to become valuable to our human groups, our superorganism, by acting out its version of what a hero is.
It’s not only good for us, it’s an essential human need.
Active belief is how we as protagonists, acting out the story of our lives, become heroic. We have to be earning status. That’s how all human groups work.
“Everywhere we go in the modern world, we create modern versions of tribes. A political movement, a football team, a religion, a cult – all human collectives are superorganisms.”
Will Storr on storytelling
It’s how fandoms work. You can be a fan of Taylor Swift, but if you want to earn status in that world, you’ve got to go to the Eras tour several times, and passionately defend her on online forums. Fans of football teams earn status by talking for 16 hours about the mistakes the manager made in the last game.
The more you actively collaborate in the story world, the more status you’ll earn within that world.
In the business world, there’s a very old-fashioned belief that people are motivated purely by money – but this just isn’t true. Every business is its own story world. People want to feel that they’re doing something that matters and that their team members see them as valuable people who are contributing to the great goals of the group. They want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to feel heroic.
Get Will Storr’s new book A Story is a Deal here.
