Storytelling is as old as humanity. And understanding what we gain from stories — the lessons, the enjoyment — might explain a lot about our psychology.

Matthew Grizzard is a media psychologist, and how we respond to storytelling is his specialty. He examines moral judgement processes against a narrative backdrop. Why we root for Batman or the Joker. Why someone may adore Tony Soprano. But his work extends into the realms of ChatGPT, media stereotypes and social media.

“Although a lot of my training is in cognitive science and psychology, I don’t really consider myself as fitting within the discipline of psychology. Psychologists tend to be more squarely interested in how we think and how the mind works,” the associate professor in the school of communications said. “I’m interested in that but the connection to communication, media and messages is really more central for me.

“Why do we cry at the movies, laugh, cheer? What does that tell us about who we are as people and how does that change the way we relate to one another?”

“Some people spend more time looking at their phones or watching movies than they spend talking to their family. So that's one reason we need to understand this type of content better.

“The other reason is it's so integral to who we are. We have stories like the Odyssey, for example, and other ancient epics that predate written communication. And so, it seems like we’ve always been telling stories. I think of it like fish and water. Storytelling surrounds us constantly, and it’s hard to see its effects because we're just so into it. Understanding how we tell stories, why we tell certain types of stories more often than others, what the effects are, is really about figuring out what it means to be human.

“That's an important question. Why are we here? What are we doing? If we understand stories that fills in a bit of that puzzle.”

“In our initial work, we’ve come up with a library of 180 different stories that varies the morality of the character — from very immoral to very moral — but also this realm of neither moral nor immoral, just a neutral person. And then good things and bad things happen to the characters in the stories in a highly controlled manner. So, we’ve got this universe of stories and we’re going to start using mathematical equations to see if we can predict how much people would want to see different story events happening.”

“The industry does research on this all the time. But they come at it from a different angle, and the types of stories they are comparing to each other is pretty limited. They’re trying to figure out what’s going to make this specific story the best final product and the most money at the box office. So, they end up with more narrow insights that apply to a very narrow set of stories that would fit within the industry as it exists. We’re trying to come up with stories that might never get made, which will give us the ability to make comparisons among a bigger range of story types and hopefully more valid predictions.”

“The typical Hollywood ending is about good characters being rewarded and bad characters being punished. But by measuring reactions to stories where bad characters are rewarded or neutral characters are punished, we'll hopefully be able to figure out: Are some people more sensitive to the happy Hollywood ending than others? We think that some people might be more tolerant of ambiguity in stories. And I'm wondering if that leads to differences in tolerance for ambiguity in the real world, and for the diversity we see in society.”

“In my lab, we talk about how our research has the potential to create a better understanding of who we are and address a blind spot we have. We obviously want to see good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people in the real world. But at the same time, there’s this idea that we set aside that type of morality for stories. We keep trying to falsify the prediction and show that sometimes people really want the villain to succeed and the hero to fail. So far (in our studies) we just can’t do it. All things being equal, we want good things to happen to good people and bad things to happen to bad people even when they are characters in a story.

“A particularly interesting finding we have made in this area relates to a liked character facing a moral conflict, where an immoral action would produce a positive effect for the liked character. Viewers will state they want the character to do the immoral thing. But even in this situation, people still condemn the character and like them less when they do the bad thing. That really surprised us.”

“I was on sabbatical last spring, reflecting on what I’m doing and I almost had a crisis of faith. I’m studying these longer-form stories while the media landscape is changing so much. Everyone is watching these 30-second videos and short-form stories.

“But then you consider Christopher Nolan’s new movie at the box office is The Odyssey, and it’s doing incredibly well. This is an ancient story that predates written text, yet it can still resonate with audiences while being updated to appeal to new generations.

“I saw it and actually cried in the theater. I never thought a movie like The Odyssey would make me cry but it’s told in a way that’s highly emotional. It’s weighty and it connects to the human condition in an incredible way. So, I feel like the ways we tell stories may be changing, and it’s hard to predict what will come next. But stories and storytelling are always going to exist because stories have an essential tie to the human experience.”