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DARPA Wants To Know How Stories Influence People

Posted by samzenpus on from the greatest-story-ever-told dept.

coondoggie writes "DARPA in a nutshell wants to know how stories or narratives influence human behavior. To this end, they are hosting a workshop called 'Stories, Neuroscience and Experimental Technologies (STORyNET): Analysis and Decomposition of Narratives in Security Contexts,' on Feb. 28th to discuss the topic. 'Stories exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity. It comes as no surprise that these influences make stories highly relevant to vexing security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. Therefore, understanding the role stories play in a security context is a matter of great import and some urgency," DARPA stated.'"

5 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Propaganda by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stories are often a delivery method for propaganda (even the good-safe-happy Aesop kind), and almost any bit of propaganda can be framed into a narrative story. The effects and influence of propaganda campaigns have been studied well previously. Start there.

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    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    1. Re:Propaganda by jpmorgan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not just propaganda. Most people think narratively, not logically. Instead of based on whether the facts and evidence are consistent and logically support a hypothesis, most people try to slot the world into stories they've heard, or believe in. Stories shape the way people think in powerful ways.

      Consider the /. post a couple down from this one Secret Plan To Kill Wikileaks With FUD Leaked. You've got people jumping on the notion that Wikileaks' recent problems are the result of an orchestrated plan to destroy it. Of course, logically, the facts don't fit, the timeline is all wrong. But people will believe it anyway, since it fits a narrative structure they've learned from books and movies and other sources of fiction.

    2. Re:Propaganda by Atrox666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why do you think we have so much fantasy media where the rogue cop is the good guy.
      It's all propaganda.

  2. Narative as Thought Patterns by Mateorabi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Darmok, and Jalad... at Tanagra!"

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    "You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8

  3. This is for science. by mosb1000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Their goal is to formalize the study of stories so that they can develop quantitative methods of tracking understanding stories. Whenever a new plant is "discovered" there are a bunch of people like you who say "well, the natives already knew of it". Yes, everyone knows about stories. But there is not a formal scientific approach to dealing with them, so they have a lot of untapped potential from a social engineering perspective. It's like building a bridge without a quantitative approach to design. Yes, people did it for thousands of years, but once they figured out the science behind it they got a lot better at it. DARPA is hoping they can achieve the same thing for stories.

    Their intent is to use this for military applications, but it's better than bombs, right? I'd rather fight wars through stories, honesty.