The Use of Storytelling as a Tool of Persuasion

Storytelling has always been recognized as a powerful tool for communication and persuasion (Oatley, 2011). It can basically change the idea or the point of view of the person easily because of the relating he does with his situation. In this thesis, the ways in which narrative can be used to influence belief and behavior will be explored. Drawing upon research from fields such as psychology, sociology, and communication (Ryan, 2013), various mechanisms through which storytelling can persuade will be examined, such as evoking emotions (Kahneman, 2011), creating a sense of connection and identification with characters (Brewer & Treyens, 1981), and activating mental models and schemes (Green & Brock, 2000). The cultural and historical contexts in which storytelling has been used for persuasion (McAdams, 2006), and to see how the medium of storytelling can affect its persuasive power will be considered. Storytelling as a tool for persuasion is a study that examines the role of storytelling to change beliefs and influence behavior. In this research, the main goal is to show how powerful storytelling is, and the way it will be shown will be collecting many different references from other researches to back up this research, and also a questionnaire will be distributed to various age groups of 18 and above in order to help collect the best information possible for the help of this research.It was found that most people, even though they have different perspectives and mindsets, it shows that, most of them agrees that storytelling can be a major tool to persuade people when used in the correct way.