Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University.
Psychol Sci Public Interest. 2022 Dec;23(3):99-141. doi: 10.1177/15291006231161337.
Stories have played a central role in human social and political life for thousands of years. Despite their ubiquity in culture and custom, however, they feature only peripherally in formal government policymaking. Government policy has tended to rely on tools with more predictable responses-incentives, transfers, and prohibitions. We argue that stories can and should feature more centrally in government policymaking. We lay out how stories can make policy more effective, specifying how they complement established policy tools. We provide a working definition of stories' key characteristics, contrasting them with other forms of communication. We trace the evolution of stories from their ancient origins to their role in mediating the impact of modern technologies on society. We then provide an account of the mechanisms underlying stories' impacts on their audiences. We conclude by describing three functions of stories-learning, persuasion, and collective action.
故事在人类社会和政治生活中已经扮演了数千年的中心角色。然而，尽管它们在文化和习俗中无处不在，但在正式的政府决策制定中，它们只是次要的。政府政策往往依赖于具有更可预测反应的工具——激励、转移和禁止。我们认为，故事可以而且应该在政府决策制定中占据更核心的地位。我们阐述了故事如何使政策更有效，具体说明了它们如何补充既定的政策工具。我们提供了故事关键特征的工作定义，将其与其他形式的沟通方式进行对比。我们追溯了故事从古代起源到在调解现代技术对社会的影响中所扮演的角色的演变。然后，我们描述了故事对其受众产生影响的机制。最后，我们通过描述故事的三个功能——学习、说服和集体行动来结束这篇文章。
