Cultural Dynamics of Narratives: Micro and Macro Implications of Narrative Transmission

在日常对话中流传的故事可能通过对社会行为施加微妙的文化影响而具有全球影响。例如，关于殉难和战争英雄的故事描述了主人公在什么背景下以什么方式追求什么目标。我们建议人们在交流这样的故事时，互相肯定和重申他们在什么情况下应该做什么。这些故事的交流可以导致一个大规模文化群体的形成和转变，这可能会产生重大的社会政治影响，如极端恐怖主义和跨文化冲突。我们在实验和计算机模拟中验证了这些命题。

Stories circulated in everyday conversations may have global implications by exerting a subtle cultural influence on social actions. Stories about martyrdom and wartime heroics, for instance, describe what goals a protagonist pursues in what way in what context. We propose that in communicating such stories people affirm and re-affirm for each other what they should do under what circumstances. The exchange of these stories can result in the formation and transformation of a large-scale cultural grouping, which may have significant socio-political implications such as extremist terrorism and intercultural clashes. We test these propositions in experiments and computer simulations.