When scientists engage in Public Understanding of Science to communicate their research to lay audiences, a common suggestion is to structure their talk around storytelling. Thus, it is crucial to know the actual effectiveness of storytelling in science communication compared to other structures. For instance, a structure almost unexplored is the one of magic or illusionism. As storytelling, it has been evolving and improving over humanity’s history to become ever more effective, granting magicians a prominent place in the entertainment and art industry. In the present work, we compared various storytelling structures and the structure of magic, through an agent-based computational model. The results open the questioning of story architectures; propose a new way to test ideas in science communication; and show that double-blind control studies are very much needed for further testing the structures of Public Understanding of Science and further developing agent-based models.
ChakrabortiATokeIMPatriarcaMAbergelF (2011) Econophysics review: Ii. agent-based models. Quantitative Finance11(7): 1013–1041.
13.
ComptonRJ (2003) The interface between emotion and attention: A review of evidence from psychology and neuroscience. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews2(2): 115–129.
14.
CormickC (2019) Who doesn’t love a good story? — What neuroscience tells about how we respond to narratives. Journal of Science Communication18(5): Y01.
15.
DahlstromMF (2010) The role of causality in information acceptance in narratives: An example from science communication. Communication Research37(6): 857–875.
16.
DahlstromMFHoSS (2012) Ethical considerations of using narrative to communicate science. Science Communication34(5): 592–617.
17.
DuarteN (2013) Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
18.
ElShafieSJ (2018) Making science meaningful for broad audiences through stories. Integrative and Comparative Biology58(6): 1213–1223.
19.
EpsteinJ (2006) Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-based Computational Modeling (Princeton Studies in Complexity). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
EpsteinJM (2002) Modeling civil violence: An agent-based computational approach. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences99(suppl. 3): 7243–7250.
21.
EpsteinJMAxtellR (1996) Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up (A Bradford book). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
22.
GansonLVernerD (1957) The Dai Vernon Book of Magic. Devon: Supreme Magic Company.
23.
GerberABrooksPGabrielMLorenzLLorkeJMertenW, et al. (2020) Science Communication Research: An Empirical Field Analysis. Berlin: Edition Innovare.
24.
GiambraLM (1995) A laboratory method for investigating influences on switching attention to task-unrelated imagery and thought. Consciousness and Cognition4(1): 1–21.
25.
HadzigeorgiouY (2016) Narrative thinking and storytelling in science education. In: HadzigeorgiouY (ed.) Imaginative Science Education. New York: Springer, pp. 83–119.
26.
HalliwellS (1998) Aristotle’s Poetics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
27.
HaradaRG (2012) Attempting the Impossible: The Art of Conjuring as Poetic Material of the Theatrical Scene. PhD Thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas.
HesseJGrossT (2014) Self-organized criticality as a fundamental property of neural systems. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience8: 166.
30.
KerbyHWDeKorverBKCantorJ (2018) Fusion story form: A novel, hybrid form of story that promotes and assesses concept learning. International Journal of Science Education40(14): 1774–1794.
31.
KlassenS (2010) The relation of story structure to a model of conceptual change in science learning. Science & Education19(3): 305–317.
32.
LamontPSteinmeyerJ (2018) The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art. London: Penguin.
33.
LeshnerAScheufeleDBackesEBostromABruine de BruinWCookK, et al. (2017) Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
34.
LindquistSIMcLeanJP (2011) Daydreaming and its correlates in an educational environment. Learning and Individual Differences21(2): 158–167.
35.
McKeeR (2011) El Guión [Story]. Barcelona: Alba editorial.
36.
MacknikSMartinez-CondeSBlakesleeS (2010) Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions. Henry Holt and Company.
37.
MarRAMasonMFLitvackA (2012) How daydreaming relates to life satisfaction, loneliness, and social support: the importance of gender and daydream content. Consciousness and Cognition21(1): 401–407.
MullerDABewesJSharmaMDReimannP (2008) Saying the wrong thing: Improving learning with multimedia by including misconceptions. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning24(2): 144–155.
40.
NegreteALartigueC (2010) The science of telling stories: Evaluating science communication via narratives (RIRC method). Journal of Media and Communication Studies2(4): 98–110.
41.
NigroRGTrivelatoSF (2012) Knowledge, its application, and attitudes associated with the reading of diverse genres of science texts. International Journal of Science Education34(16): 2529–2564.
42.
OrmazábalIBorottoFAAstudilloHF (2017) Influence of money distribution on civil violence model. Complexity2017: 15.
43.
ParerasG (2013) Arturo De Ascanio, La Depuración Constante De Lo Mismo [Arturo de Ascanio, The Constant Debugging of the Same]. Madrid: Editorial Famulus.
44.
RobertsonIHManlyTAndradeJBaddeleyBTYiendJ (1997) ‘oops!’: Performance correlates of everyday attentional failures in traumatic brain injured and normal subjects. Neuropsychologia35(6): 747–758.
SchellingTC (1971) Dynamic models of segregation. Journal of Mathematical Sociology1(2): 143–186.
47.
ScotR (1989) The Discoverie of Witchcraft. North Chelmsford, MA: Courier Corporation.
48.
SimisMJMaddenHCacciatoreMAYeoSK (2016) The lure of rationality: Why does the deficit model persist in science communication?Public Understanding of Science25(4): 400–414.
49.
SingerJ (1966) Daydreaming: An Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Experience. New York: Original Random House. Available at: https://books.google.cl/books?id=zXd-AAAAMAAJ
SmallwoodJSchoolerJW (2006) The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin132(6): 946–958.
52.
SmallwoodJFishmanDJSchoolerJW (2007) Counting the cost of an absent mind: Mind wandering as an underrecognized influence on educational performance. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review14(2): 230–236.
53.
SteinmeyerJ (2004) Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
54.
TamarizJ (1988) The magic way. Madrid: Editorial Frankson Magic Books.
TeasdaleJDDritschelBHTaylorMJProctorLLloydCANimmo-SmithI, et al. (1995) Stimulus-independent thought depends on central executive resources. Memory & Cognition23(5): 551–559.
57.
VoglerC (2007) The Writer’s Journey. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.
WegnerDM (1997) Why the mind wanders. In: CohenJSchoolerJ (eds) Scientific Approaches to Consciousness. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 295–315.
60.
YakovenkoVMRosserJBJr(2009) Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income. Reviews of Modern Physics81(4): 1703.
61.
YorkeJ (2013) Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. London: Penguin.
62.
ZabruckyKMMooreD (1999) Influence of text genre on adults’ monitoring of understanding and recall. Educational Gerontology25(8): 691–710.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
