There are those who have wondered about the raison d'être of this universal. After all, if all human beings love stories, it is logical to think that some advantage must or should have provided this activity in evolutionary terms. With this general idea as a starting point, a group of researchers from different geographical and disciplinary backgrounds, led by Andrea Bamberg Migliano, from University College London, have put forward the hypothesis that storytelling has played an important role in the evolution of human cooperation through the transmission of social and cooperative norms that allow to coordinate the behavior of the group.
According to this team of anthropologists, for a human group to cooperate, not only must we solve the problem of how to penalize those who do not cooperate and take advantage of those who do (what is called the free-rider problem in English). It would also be necessary for group members to share knowledge about the behavior of others; In other words, it would not be enough to know how to act in a given situation, but the members of the group need to know that others also know how to act. It is what the authors of the work call meta-knowledge. In this context, language is essential, of course, as a means of communication, but in addition to language it is necessary for group members to share norms and ways of acting with others, and to know it. And for that, they argue, stories can be very important instruments.
To contrast the hypothesis of departure, the authors set out to study hunter-gatherer peoples, since groups of that condition best represent the situation in which human groups have developed throughout most of their history. The group chosen was the agtas, hunter-gatherers living in the Philippines. They analyzed several stories that adults tell each other and that adults tell children. They also compiled 89 stories told in various groups of hunter-gatherers from different backgrounds and classified them according to their content and the type of norms or attitudes they transmit. In another order of things, they assessed whether the presence of good storytellers in the group is reflected in the degree of cooperation within them, as well as whether the narrators are favored in any way, either by the social relations they maintain or by their reproductive success By means of these last two elements, they sought to find out if useful skills for the group, such as telling good stories, also yield some benefit for those who exercise them.
And indeed, the stories are narrated that convey messages that promote cooperation, equality of the sexes, and social equality, traits that characterize their groups. Not only those of the agta, the stories that count in other human groups also seem to be elaborated to coordinate social behavior and promote cooperation. Individuals belonging to towns in which there is a greater proportion of individuals gifted to tell stories are more cooperative. The best narrators are preferred as teammates or friends and also have greater reproductive success.
The conclusion drawn by the authors of the work is that storytelling is a cultural trait with adaptive value, since it helps to articulate effective systems of cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies. And they also highlight the fact that certain individual behaviors or traits, which are beneficial to the group, can also be selected individually. However, that narrations fulfill these functions does not prevent them from fulfilling others or to derive other benefits from the practice of telling stories.
We are storytellers; we not only enjoy counting, listening, reading or seeing them; even the way we think is directly related to the structure of the narrative. If it were not a valuable trait, we would not like it that much and would not be so important in our lives. The idea that narratives promote cooperation is suggestive, but perhaps there are more reasons why we enjoy them so much.
Sources:
D Smith, P Schlaepfer, K Major, M Dyble, A E Page, J Thompson, N Chaudhary, G D Salali, r Mace, L Astete, M Ngales, L Vinicius & A B Migliano (2017): Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling. Nature Communications doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-02036-8