The Power of Narratives

[...]Hamby, Tezer, and Escalas test a novel mechanism for narratives effectiveness. Using state-of-the-art techniques, we measure the shapes of thousands of narratives from a variety of domains (i.e., movies, TV shows, and academic papers) and test how they relate to success (e.g., evaluations or citations). [...]the excitement that speed generates likely comes at a (cognitive) cost. [...]speed may have a positive or negative relationship with success, depending on the context.