The term “narrative psychology” was introduced by psychologist Theodor Sarbin (1911–2005) in the mid-1980s. Sarbin was a pioneer in a psychological theory known as role theory, which examines behaviour and its social acceptability based on individuals’ social and gender roles. Sarbin positioned narrative as the fundamental metaphor in psychology. Concurrently with Sarbin’s work, Dan McAdams, in 1985, provided another theoretical contribution to interpreting life narratives personally. Since then, the concept of stories has held a distinctive place in psychology.
The concept of narratives encompasses a vast scope of our dialogues, arguments, and analyses, including various forms such as actual stories and novels, myths, history, news, and even dreams, fantasies, hopes, despair, doubt, planning, learning, and love. These narratives vary tremendously across cultures and historical periods.
In summarizing the book The Science of Stories: An Introduction to Narrative Psychology, I attempted to explore multiple facets of narrative psychology to assess their potential as a foundation for my project in cognitive computational linguistic studies, the study of cognitive complexity. In this article, I will present a summary of what I believe is relevant and could serve as a building block for constructing a project on intellectual complexity or cognitive computational linguistic studies in general.
Jerome Bruner defined the “narrative mode” as a type of thinking that does not rely on factual truth but seeks to create a realistic representation of life, exploring human intentions, actions, stories, and their consequences. In contrast, Bruner defined its counterpart, the “paradigmatic mode” or logical-scientific mode, as one grounded in solid facts, abstract principles, and knowledge based on empirical scientific evidence. According to Bruner, narratives do not merely represent what happened but reflect the psychological perspective on what happened. Stories, in his view, are the way we make sense of life. Life, as Bruner sees it, is not reality itself but our narrative about reality. As a prominent theorist in narrative psychology, Bruner’s elaboration suggests that the narrative mode is a key component of ideas. Just as scientific and logical ideas have varying degrees of complexity that can be computationally represented, the same applies to narratives.
Studying patterns of complexity or branching into the study of shifts in intellectual orientations makes narratives foundational to any historical study of intellectual evolution, such as the study of complexity. An example of shifting intellectual orientations comes from the work of Wendy Stainton Rogers. Rogers examined changes in psychological perspectives on personality in relation to internal control. Early research portrayed individuals with strong internal control as positive heroes, while more recent studies avoid distinguishing between different types of internal and external control. The concept of internal control attributes success to personal, internal factors, whereas external control focuses on external factors that either support or hinder success.
Another aspect where narratives intersect with the study of intellectual complexity is the narrative dimension of purely scientific and logical fields. Although the empirical, data-driven nature of scientific theories like evolution may dominate, humans often imbue them with a narrative quality. Evolution, when analyzed as a story or narrative, involves a certain level of complexity. It spans from the atomic level—encompassing genes and cells—to a comprehensive level, explaining the trajectory of living organisms throughout history. This contrasts with other narratives, such as social theories, which begin and end with Homo sapiens and may focus on specific periods of human history.
Ultimately, we are dealing with human minds, not machines, and narratives may provide a suitable framework for organizing the components of complexity and their relationships within a theory. In 1944, Simmel and Heider created an animated cartoon featuring a large triangle, a small triangle, and a circle moving within a square that was occasionally open on one side. Participants were asked to describe what they saw. Their descriptions resembled accounts of human actions woven into a story, such as: “A man planned to meet a girl, but she arrived with another man. The first man told the second to leave, and the second told the first to go, shaking his head. The two men argued, and it was clear the girl didn’t want the first man. She entered the room, followed by the first man, leaving the second leaning against the wall in a weakened state. In the end, the girl and the second man distanced themselves from the first, who, blinded by anger, followed them and tried to enter the room but failed.” Despite the animation showing only moving shapes, participants interpreted it with intricate human intent.
This human capacity to attribute intentions—to objects, nature, or other people—emerges early in life and persists even in individuals with autism, demonstrating the power of narrative representation. Studying narratives computationally and intellectually remains challenging due to the lack of attempts to map stories as schemas or data representations that could be processed like other texts. However, intentions remain a distinguishing feature of narrative representation, necessitating further research into how they can be derived and extracted from texts.
László, János. The science of stories: An introduction to narrative psychology. Routledge, 2008.