[Lee Yongbeom's Psychology of Happiness] Why Do We Cheer for Hero Stories?

<30> Happiness Contained in Stories

Humans Prefer Stories Over Logic
Knowledge and Memory Structured as Stories
Summarizing Information Reduces Instability

Successful Stories Follow Certain Patterns
Innate Preference for Summarization and Simplification
Favoring Plausible Stories Over Truth

Stories Often Have Happy Endings
Hope Amid a World Full of Misfortune
Mythical Heroes and Superheroes as Substitutes
Belief in Fairness and the Pleasure of Retribution

Iyongbeom Novelist

As the popularity of Hallyu content spreads worldwide, the drama "Squid Game" has been embroiled in plagiarism controversies because there are several stories about life-or-death games. Nevertheless, the explosive response this drama received from global viewers is analyzed to be due to the unique "heart line" that only Korean dramas possess. Korean dramas have a distinctive storyline that manipulates viewers' emotions. However, apart from this analysis, people tend to like stories with similar patterns.

Why Story Patterns Are Similar

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt stated in "The Righteous Mind" that "the human mind is not a logical calculator but a story calculator." We are captivated more by stories than by logic. The reason we prefer stories even when we know they are false is that our knowledge and memories are structured in a storytelling format. Humans remember and think in the form of stories. While we are awake, an enormous amount of information is input into the brain. If this information is not properly arranged and integrated, we cannot function properly in daily life. The brain filters the overflowing input information and integrates it into a stable and consistent belief system. Even if the information is contradictory, the brain integrates it according to stories it already knows.

The more information is summarized, the more orderly the world becomes, and randomness and instability decrease. Therefore, we prefer regular and consistent patterns. This is because our brains have not evolved to understand unfamiliar and abstract problems. Although the knowledge and information humans must remember have increased tremendously over tens of thousands of years, the brain still perceives the world in a Paleolithic manner. The brain's way of easily remembering complex information is to simplify the structure of information. Only by understanding the context of information can we truly comprehend the world. This is why widely known myths, legends, and folktales are structured in certain patterns. A representative example is the Cinderella story. There are said to be about 350 types of Cinderella-type stories worldwide. The story of "Kongjwi and Patjwi" also belongs to this category.

Humans like to summarize and simplify. Stories allow us to understand the world and grasp the meaning of events in life in a concise way. For example, the childhood story of Kongjwi and Patjwi contains the real message from a mother: "The stepmother will not leave you alone. So watch your father's wandering eye." Stories were a kind of survival manual for ancestors to remember and pass on survival methods. Many stories show similar patterns because the themes required of humans in social relationships are almost the same.

Photo by Pixabay

What Kind of Story Will Succeed?

Successful stories do not teach something new or contain surprising information. The themes in successful stories are things that many people want to believe, are already believing, and naturally should believe. Stories do not need to be factual. Even if not true, a plausible and believable story is enough. Once a story is accepted by the world, it continues to be elaborated and spread until proven false.

What persuades us is not truth or facts but things that satisfy emotional needs. People are more enthusiastic about Einstein's personal story than Einstein's theory of relativity. The more fabricated a story is, the more appealing it tends to be. For example, clinical data showing the harms of smoking cannot overcome the story "My father smoked 100 cigarettes a day but lived to 100." Because of this, even in today's scientifically advanced world, supernatural and irrational stories still dominate us.

The desire to invent fictional stories is one of the latent human natures. Humans are physiologically adapted to stories. Imagining fiction itself gives us pleasure. The brain has a reward system that makes us enjoy fiction, and this reward system is governed by the "dopamine system." When dopamine levels increase in the brain, not only does the ability to recognize patterns improve, but suspicion toward certain objects also diminishes. Dopamine affects addiction. For example, gambling addiction arises from the confidence that one can find certain patterns in random cards. Therefore, once caught in superstition, it is hard to escape.

Why did humans create fiction and come to enjoy it? Ancient people, filled with uncertainty about natural phenomena and anxiety about the future, needed summaries to organize the incomprehensible world. In this process, they realized that believing in the conceptual worlds of morality, heaven and hell, gods, and judgment as truth provides psychological stability. However, themes like good and evil, death, and gods are very abstract. Abstract concepts are difficult to convey and understand. Stories are needed to propagate these concepts. Therefore, most religious and moral memes are composed in story form. Stories are multidimensional and have contexts such as "when, who, where, what, why, and how." These contexts make reality more "realistic" than actual facts. Stories have the power to persuade the majority. Through stories, people impose order on the world they live in, accepting the given reality with stability. They also relieve uncertainty and anxiety by integrating numerous daily events into consistent patterns.

Photo by Pixabay

The Pleasure of Retribution

Most stories teach socially acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, allowing people to learn life lessons without paying a high price. The moral truth everyone desires is that the wicked fail and the good triumph. According to a 2017 paper by German and British research teams, humans develop a desire for the wicked to be punished by around age six. The wicked should end their lives unhappily, and the good should eventually be rewarded with happiness. Stories satisfy the expectations of those who want retribution. The kind-hearted Heungbu fixes the swallow's leg and becomes rich, and the kind Cinderella overcomes the interference of evil people and marries the prince. But in reality, such causal relationships do not hold. There is no box of gold and silver opening, no swallow bringing seeds in return for kindness, no fairy helping Cinderella, and no prince falling for a ragged girl disguised in a beautiful dress.

A scene from the Netflix drama "Squid Game."

Nevertheless, people believe the protagonist was rewarded because they were good. This vain belief arises because people prefer stories compressed into causal relationships over abstract truths. If people cannot be happy in reality, they want to be happy even after death. The simple answer that meets this expectation is a story. Stories promise a happy ending. We are attracted to similar stories containing universal themes. The heroes of myths that satisfied our ancestors' expectations have now been replaced by superheroes. Today's superheroes fight not only earthly villains but also villains who seek to dominate the universe. They promise hope to us living in a world full of evil and misfortune.

The history of stories is very long, but their patterns have not changed much. All stories contain the universal truth that good triumphs, the moral outcome that good people are rewarded even after death, and the message that the suffering of good people is temporary. This belief in fairness, the belief that life is worth enjoying, and the belief that one will overcome adversity and survive are the motivations that allow us to live with hope.

Lee Yongbeom, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.