Some people are spectacular storytellers. They can hold a room—and attention—seemingly effortlessly, and get people to hang on their words and still want more. It is truly an enviable communication skill.
The great thing about being a great storyteller is that it taps into a natural part of being human: sharing stories is an essential people skill that connects us.
For those who want to foster deeper connections and become skilled storytellers, a team of Harvard researchers has identified the secret sauce.
Social psychological researchers Gus Cooney, Daniel Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson published a paper in the journal Association for Psychological Science titled “The Novelty Penalty: Why Do People Like Talking About New Experiences but Hearing About Old Ones?“
Their findings were surprising: the stories that captivated listeners weren’t new, exciting, or enthralling—they were ones people could relate to.
Successful storytelling
Successful storytelling centers on shared context for listeners.
In a series of experiments, 90 Harvard undergrads were recruited to be either a listener or a speaker. The listeners were instructed to watch one specific video, while the speakers were instructed to watch the same video as well as a novel (new) one. Afterward, the speakers were told to tell the listeners about both videos.
“In our study, when both parties had viewed the same video, if the speaker made a mistake about something in their story, the listener could just fill in the information since they had seen the same video,” lead author and former Ph.D. student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Gus Cooney, Ph.D., told The Harvard Gazette. “But when the listener hadn’t watched the same video and didn’t have that necessary background knowledge, it was very easy for them to get confused.”
The story that appealed most to the listeners was not the new video—it was the one they had already watched and were familiar with.
“The speakers thought listeners would enjoy hearing about a novel story,” said Cooney. “In fact, listeners enjoyed the familiar story much more.”
Researcher Daniel Gilbert shared with NPR, “Most of us, when we tell stories, leave all sorts of things out. As a result, if our listeners aren’t already familiar with the topic we’re talking about, they get lost really, really quickly.”
The “novelty penalty”
The phenomenon is something researchers referred to as the “novelty penalty.”
In the study, researchers explained that storytellers often miss the mark because “they worry too much about boring their listeners and not enough about confusing them, and that they therefore tell novel stories to listeners who would have enjoyed hearing familiar stories a great deal more.”
Cooney added, “It struck me that we always try to add these novel stories to conversations, and then it doesn’t go over as well as we think and then conversations kind of naturally drift back towards talking about familiar things or things that we have in common with other people.”
Researchers also coined the term “novelty bonus,” which is essentially the opposite of the “novelty penalty.” In the “novelty bonus,” storytellers expect that by telling new, exciting stories, they will be rewarded. But the opposite happened.
“I think our imaginations can often fail us if we’ve never [experienced something] ourselves. Imagination is great, but it also has its limits,” Cooney explained.
How to be a good storyteller
With this information, becoming a good storyteller centers on keeping our tales simple, relatable, and focused on the familiar.
In the study, the researchers pointed out four specific reasons familiar stories were more powerful than novel ones. Familiar stories: “contain significant amounts of novel information, evoke rich personal memories, allow speakers and listeners to bond over common experiences, and allow listeners to gain information about themselves via social comparison.”
To do this, Cooney explained, “Basically we should err more on the side of not trying to confuse our listeners rather than always trying to delight them and interest them with novel information.”
Gilbert also told the Association for Psychological Science, “People are fairly awful storytellers who leave out a lot of important information. Our friends probably would enjoy hearing us tell them about a painting they’ve never seen or a book they’ve never read if we could describe those things well. But most of us can’t. As a result, our friends are actually a whole lot happier when we tell them what they already know because at least they understand what we’re talking about. We worry too much about thrilling our listeners and not enough about confusing them.”
