Neuroscience Reveals How Stress and Culture Shape Stories
Taking Malala's courageous journey as a reference point, neuroscience explains how chronic stress and cultural forces influence our response to stories.
Malala Yousafzai fought for every girl's right to education in Pakistan.
In 2012, the Taliban attempted to assassinate the 15-year-old. While she was traveling home from school, they shot her in the head.
Remarkably, Malala survived.
Malala continued advocating for education equality and, at just 17, became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Her story of courage ignited the imaginations of children and adults around the world, reminding us that change is possible.
While Malala's story is widely celebrated, NOT everyone was moved by her courage.
Neuroscientists have found that exposure to chronic stress and violence can significantly impact brain development and emotional responses.
Low-income teens exposed to high levels of violence often have weaker neural connections in parts of the brain responsible for:
Awareness
Judgment
Processing emotions
Exposure to chronic stress and violence diminishes the capacity to be affected by powerful stories. Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s study involved 73 low-income teenagers who watched various emotional video clips, including Malala's story, while their brain activity was monitored.
Many teens in the study showed muted responses, making it harder for them to emotionally connect with and be moved by inspirational stories.
We see stories through our past experiences, BUT did you know cultural values also shape our narratives?
When we encounter a story, we impose our own expectations onto the narrative—blending our cultural ways of seeing and knowing with what we observe.
Experiments show Westerners and East Asians see different aspects of the same story. In one experiment, participants recalled an underwater animation with three big fish, corals, seaweed, bubbles, etc. American participants remembered the most prominent fish first (“there’s a big fish…”). In contrast, Japanese participants described the surroundings first (“there’s a pond…”) and were twice as likely as American participants to note relationships between the fish and their environment (e.g., “the big fish swam past the seaweed”).
In short, cultural forces shape what we notice and remember, causing us to see the world differently.
Closing notes
Malala's story challenges us to reflect on our own narratives. Some people feel deeply moved by her courage, while others forget the story or are 'not yet' emotionally touched due to their unique past experiences.
Lesson 1. We are not passive observers like walking video cameras.
Lesson 2. We filter and interpret complex stories through our lived experiences.
Lesson 3. We co-construct meaning and collective identity through cultural forces.
The brain constructs feelings and mental states—transforming them into meaningful stories that reveal themselves when we are ready. In turn, our collective stories alter the course of humanity.
🎧 Podcast Reference: Dr. Immordino-Yang: How Emotions & Social Factors Impact Learning on Huberman Lab.
Insightful explanation! I always wondered why the huge variance in how we interpret stories. That's a powerful factor to keep in mind.
How does culture affect what we see? I was not able to get why Japanese noticed environment more vs Western counterpart?