Analyzing "The Dark Side of Storytelling"
"The Dark Side of Storytelling" by Suzanne Duncan
Summary of the Talk:
The main idea of the Ted Talk was that overtime our stories are negatively impacting us.
Suzanne is a story skeptic. She explains what happens when our "protective imagination drives a false narrative." She states that "sometimes, the everyday stories we tell ourselves - and how we think about our roles in those stories - can do more harm than good."
She supports this argument with the following ideas:
1. A cause of this is attribution bias within a story.
- In psychology, An attribution bias is a cognitive (thought) bias that refers to the systematic errors that a person makes when they try to find reasons for their own behaviors and motivations as well as the behaviors and motivations of others.
- "A bias like this, armed with a powerful story, is like a bias on crack." - Duncan
- Duncan states that when she surveyed others about their financial successes or failures that they end up, in the end, blaming their failures on external forces. They don't learn from their successes or failures.
2. She engages the audience by stating that we all do this and if you think not, think again!" Suzanne gives statistics such as the fact that "the majority of individuals tell 3-4 lies per hour" and that "50 yrs of psychology and learning research has shown that humans resist the truth and even tend to get defensive in difficult learning situations. - nearly all of the time - nearly 99% of the time."
3. She then continues after stating the facts in #2 and appeals to her audience by stating that not even she is immune to this. Suzanne speaks of her hobby in equestrian show jumping and how she would make up excuses as to why she may be failing at a competition. She would blame it on multiple factors that included outside conditions, her trainer, her horse... all things that didn't deem her failure her fault.
4. Duncan also points out that there is a historical trend when it comes to this "dark side of storytelling" and that it can be dangerous when utilized by those in positions of power. "An example of this on a large scale is politicians creating stories throughout history that end up leading to small scale conflict, or worse, war."
Duncan utilizes her knowledge in psychology in idea #1 to reveal her credibility in this field. She examines the psychological aspect of "the dark side of storytelling" and speaks of her surveys of professionals in finance and other study subjects to assert her ethos, primarily associated with credibility. The audience can now trust her authority/knowledge and is willing to inquire about what she is saying. Here she is also using loaded words/language that the audience may not have enough knowledge about to be able to refute her argument.
In idea #2, Duncan uses logos to support her argument, stating facts associated with the quantity and quality data she has considered in relation to this subject/ her argument. This is a way for her to use the appeal of numbers/facts/statistics to persuade by showing how many people think something is true. This can be flawed considering she doesn't clearly state her resource for her facts.
In the third idea Suzanne tries to use emotional appeal or pathos to show that she is "just like all of you" (a.k.a, part of her audience), by describing an activity she does as a hobby. This is similar to the technique of appealing to plain folks. It is a way of letting her audience know that she is aware of herself as being a human who is at fault of this issue (a.k.a., her argument) and shows her as being self-aware which increases her credibility even further as a presenter.
In the 4th idea presented by Suzanne, she basically states where she feels that her argument has probably been the most relevant/impactful and describes her argument as being a large-scale, historical trend. It is her way of showing that this is definitely a continuing trend and that "the dark side of storytelling" is definitely a bandwagon (to note, an inevitable one) that humanity has jumped on.
I chose this Ted Talk first off because the title intrigued me. I have always been interested in dark stories vs. light-hearted, happy ones, and upon first glance I assumed that maybe the speaker would talk about dystopian literature. Although that wasn't the case, I still liked the fact that the talk was about real life instead, and the reality that people themselves make even everyday stories they tell dark, simply by lying about them. I found it interesting that by doing this (a.k.a. telling these stories with attribution bias), people are not only lying to others and creating an alternate persona of themselves that exists in their fictional narrative, but they are also able to perceive themselves in a different light even if they know it to be false. It's almost as if this talk was clarifying people's conceptions about alter-egos and our internal self-image vs. what we actually put out for the world to see. This concept also relates to our reading of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and our analysis of the duality of man. I think that this concept of "the dark side of storytelling" will tie into our next unit of dystopian literature, considering the fact that dystopian societies are all about the unknown and defining the line between what is reality and what is fiction, just as Suzanne Duncan tried to explain how reality becomes lost in fiction in the talk.
Summary of the Talk:
The main idea of the Ted Talk was that overtime our stories are negatively impacting us.
Suzanne is a story skeptic. She explains what happens when our "protective imagination drives a false narrative." She states that "sometimes, the everyday stories we tell ourselves - and how we think about our roles in those stories - can do more harm than good."
She supports this argument with the following ideas:
1. A cause of this is attribution bias within a story.
- In psychology, An attribution bias is a cognitive (thought) bias that refers to the systematic errors that a person makes when they try to find reasons for their own behaviors and motivations as well as the behaviors and motivations of others.
- "A bias like this, armed with a powerful story, is like a bias on crack." - Duncan
- Duncan states that when she surveyed others about their financial successes or failures that they end up, in the end, blaming their failures on external forces. They don't learn from their successes or failures.
2. She engages the audience by stating that we all do this and if you think not, think again!" Suzanne gives statistics such as the fact that "the majority of individuals tell 3-4 lies per hour" and that "50 yrs of psychology and learning research has shown that humans resist the truth and even tend to get defensive in difficult learning situations. - nearly all of the time - nearly 99% of the time."
3. She then continues after stating the facts in #2 and appeals to her audience by stating that not even she is immune to this. Suzanne speaks of her hobby in equestrian show jumping and how she would make up excuses as to why she may be failing at a competition. She would blame it on multiple factors that included outside conditions, her trainer, her horse... all things that didn't deem her failure her fault.
4. Duncan also points out that there is a historical trend when it comes to this "dark side of storytelling" and that it can be dangerous when utilized by those in positions of power. "An example of this on a large scale is politicians creating stories throughout history that end up leading to small scale conflict, or worse, war."
Duncan utilizes her knowledge in psychology in idea #1 to reveal her credibility in this field. She examines the psychological aspect of "the dark side of storytelling" and speaks of her surveys of professionals in finance and other study subjects to assert her ethos, primarily associated with credibility. The audience can now trust her authority/knowledge and is willing to inquire about what she is saying. Here she is also using loaded words/language that the audience may not have enough knowledge about to be able to refute her argument.
In idea #2, Duncan uses logos to support her argument, stating facts associated with the quantity and quality data she has considered in relation to this subject/ her argument. This is a way for her to use the appeal of numbers/facts/statistics to persuade by showing how many people think something is true. This can be flawed considering she doesn't clearly state her resource for her facts.
In the third idea Suzanne tries to use emotional appeal or pathos to show that she is "just like all of you" (a.k.a, part of her audience), by describing an activity she does as a hobby. This is similar to the technique of appealing to plain folks. It is a way of letting her audience know that she is aware of herself as being a human who is at fault of this issue (a.k.a., her argument) and shows her as being self-aware which increases her credibility even further as a presenter.
In the 4th idea presented by Suzanne, she basically states where she feels that her argument has probably been the most relevant/impactful and describes her argument as being a large-scale, historical trend. It is her way of showing that this is definitely a continuing trend and that "the dark side of storytelling" is definitely a bandwagon (to note, an inevitable one) that humanity has jumped on.
I chose this Ted Talk first off because the title intrigued me. I have always been interested in dark stories vs. light-hearted, happy ones, and upon first glance I assumed that maybe the speaker would talk about dystopian literature. Although that wasn't the case, I still liked the fact that the talk was about real life instead, and the reality that people themselves make even everyday stories they tell dark, simply by lying about them. I found it interesting that by doing this (a.k.a. telling these stories with attribution bias), people are not only lying to others and creating an alternate persona of themselves that exists in their fictional narrative, but they are also able to perceive themselves in a different light even if they know it to be false. It's almost as if this talk was clarifying people's conceptions about alter-egos and our internal self-image vs. what we actually put out for the world to see. This concept also relates to our reading of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and our analysis of the duality of man. I think that this concept of "the dark side of storytelling" will tie into our next unit of dystopian literature, considering the fact that dystopian societies are all about the unknown and defining the line between what is reality and what is fiction, just as Suzanne Duncan tried to explain how reality becomes lost in fiction in the talk.
Hey, Shea! (I was going to do this TED talk, but decided to do another.) Good job in not making your blog post too descriptive. Your summary is concise and it hits the key points of the TED talk. You add great analysis about how the speaker attempts to convey her message. During your analysis, you provide enough evidence to back up your arguments. Finally, I thought it was interested of how this TED talk intrigued you because that was also the reason why I was about to watch it, too.
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