Running head: IMPORTANCE OF STORYTELLING 1

The Importance of Storytelling: How Stories Impact

Psychological and Emotional Development Through Imagination

Brianna Wilson

Chadron State College

Author Note

This literature review partially fulfills the requirements for CAP469E Outside: Yourself

in the World, instructed by Dr. Matthew Evertson during the 2018 Spring Semester.
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Abstract

Throughout time, people have told stories to their children as a way of passing on important

lessons and traditions. While our western society no longer relies on oral storytelling to pass on

our history and share our culture with the younger generation, storytelling is still just as

important. Stories nurture a child’s imagination which, in turn, can also help children face the

difficulties they will come across throughout their lives. Literature forms a solid platform for

young people as they progress through life and helps them make sense of the senseless world in

which we live.

Keywords: storytelling, fairy tales, youth, child, young adult, emotional development
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The Importance of Storytelling: How Stories Impact

Psychological and Emotional Development Through Imagination

Folklore has existed since humans first started to congregate and build groups, which led

to societies – each society then developed its own culture. An abstract concept since the late

1800s, many scholars have defined “folklore” since the beginning of its study. Perhaps the best

way to define it, however, is to identify what folklorists study. If we do this, folklore is then

defined as:

. . . human creativity within specific cultural and social contexts, including how such

expressions (i.e. stories, music, material culture, and festivals) are linked to political,

religious, ethnic, regional, and other forms of group identity. (Social Sciences, Health,

and Education Library, n.d., Folklore as an Academic Discipline section)

Furthermore, we can therefore break folklore down into separate genres based on their content,

such as music, materialistic crafts, stories, belief and religion, or food. And for the purpose of

this paper, we will focus on narrative folklore, such as “legends, urban legends, fairy tales, folk

tales, [and] personal experience narrative” (Social Sciences, Health and Education Library, n.d.,

Genres of Folklore section).

Storytelling has been around since the dawn of humanity. People used stories to

communicate history and socialize with one another. They used it to teach their children lessons

about life, love, happiness, death, and acceptable behavior. Parents tell their children stories

before bed as a way to bond while simultaneously relaxing the child and lulling them to sleep.

This paper explores the importance of oral storytelling in today’s culture and society,

particularly for the psychological wellbeing of children and young adults. Technology has

replaced many storytelling traditions, and while books and movies may impart lessons to their
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readers or viewers, there is often a disconnect – at least for children – in relating that lesson to

themselves. When telling stories in person, this is less likely because children can ask questions

and get answers in return. Recent research shows the importance of storytelling; it can be used as

a therapeutic tool for troubled children and teens, to help them gain an outside perspective on

their lives and, again, relate the lessons to themselves.

Literature Review

As society has changed and technology has developed, people have stopped sharing

stories orally. History comes from documentaries, textbooks, and memoirs. Some parents still

tell bedtime stories, but not all and not as often – that bonding time is lost (Tsitsani et al., 2011;

Rahman, 2017). Fairy tales are told to children through movies or books, instead of by their

parents. And then, consequentially, they also don’t tell as many stories of their own because of

this technology.

Stadler and Ward (2005) talk about the importance of children using narratives and

telling their own stories in their article, “Supporting the Narrative Development of Young

Children.”

First, narratives are a useful tool for the development of oral language . . . Second,

narratives are thought to form a bridge to literacy and predict academic success . . .

[And] third, there is evidence that narratives are related to conceptual development. (p.

73)

Children who tell stories have been proven to excel in school, where literacy is crucial for

success. Additionally, children who listen to and tell stories can grasp abstract and obscure

concepts sooner than other children, given them the upper hand in social and highly emotional
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situations. Children who can grasp concepts outside of themselves are more likely to be able to

relate to others.

Another author, Walker (2010), wrote about how common storytelling was in the past

and its influence in society and culture. “Before printed books . . . myths and legends were part

of narrative communication; storytelling was a vital part of entertainment as well as education”

(p. 83).

Traditionally, the audience was encouraged to participate in storytelling. They were

encouraged to ask questions and make their own inferences from the myths, legends, and fairy

tales they were told. As a community, people could grow and learn together the deeper meanings

behind the stories they grew up with. They could connect with each other through stories.

Stories connect people across all cultures and generations. Tsitsani et al. in their 2011

article, “Fairy Tales: A Compass for Children’s Healthy Development – A Qualitative Study in a

Greek Island,” write, “[Fairy tales], in their many forms . . . have such a profound meaning in our

pursuit of happiness and thus, appeal to individuals of all ages” (p. 266).

In most of the research that I have read in preparation for this paper, interviewers have

talked to parents and care givers who tell stories to children and almost all of them have asked

the parents whether they like the stories. Most have said that they do, for reasons ranging from

they’re relatable, to they’re entertaining, to they keep the child entertained. One of the most

overarching reasons that parents liked telling stories to their children in the Greek Island study,

was because they could impart lessons and promote psychological, social, and cultural growth

through storytelling.

For children, stories represent one of the most important cultural and social events of

their life, functioning as instruments of socialization and acculturation . . . children’s

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literature stimulates mind and personality development, providing young readers with the

mechanisms of coping with their inner problems, life’s stresses and anxieties. (Tsitsani et

al., 2010, p. 267)

In other words, stories provide children with some of the most necessary tools they need

throughout life. Tsitsani et al. later go on to add, “We could compare fairy tales to compasses,

which provide road maps to help children find their pathway to love, power and privilege . . .

[and] pointing the way back to [the] safety and serenity of their home” (2010, p. 267).

These ideas are listed similarly in Walker’s 2010 article, “Young People’s Mental Health:

The Spiritual Power of Fairy Stories, Myths and Legends.” Walker explains that fairy tales,

myths, and legends provide a largely untouched tool for therapists and counselors to help

children gain an outside perspective and deal with the issues they face as they grow older and

gain independence. Walker writes:

. . . childhood tales form a building block in the construction of the child’s fantasy world,

and therefore their personality development . . . this offers an opportunity to understand

the variety of meanings and influences contained therein at many levels . . . Children and

young people have the capacity to conjure feelings of faith and hope when experiencing

emotional and psychological distress . . . Myths, legends and fairy stories as part of their

early child development offer a rich source of material to draw from and enlist in the

therapeutic endeavor. Fairies often act in a healing capacity in mythology . . . (pp. 82-83)

The imagination is a powerful tool. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one tool often used

in counseling and a main component is changing the way a person thinks about themselves and

their life. Additionally, being able to imagine yourself in a better place in the future is also

extremely important – envisioning the light at the end of the tunnel.

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“Harnessing the child’s imagination can be a powerful vehicle for transforming

experience at the psychic level” (Walker, 2010, p. 83). So often we underestimate the power of

the mind and people tend to rely on physical entities to make them feel better (e.g. psychotropic

drugs, alcohol, illegal substances). Really, the first step to changing a person’s life is to guide

them to change their mental outlook on life.

Walker (2010) later goes on to explain further how the imagination is such an important

role in helping children through various internal struggles; ultimately to help them deal with their

eternal struggles.

The fairy story operates at the overt level where obvious universal cultural concepts of

right and wrong and other moral dilemmas are struggled with. It also operates at a covert

level carrying important messages to the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind

that affect the child’s sense of culture . . . [T]he child is thereby able to identify with the

symbolic figure and absorb the moral message internally” (pp. 84-85)

While the previous passage refers specifically to “culture,” the messages are so much

deeper than that, especially for children. When the child can identify with the characters within

the stories, they become emotionally invested in them. They become a part of the children and

move through their lives with them. Some characters become like friends and family to young

people, providing a refuge when they are struggling through life’s difficulties.

Fairy tales teach us that there is a sense of justice and equity we share, that the bad guys

always come to a bad end, that people who work diligently will be successful, that

cleanliness is the basis of health, and so on. (Rahman, 2017, p. 339)

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Rahman (2017) later goes on to explain in the same article, “The Revival of Local Fairy Tales

for Children Education,” that fairy tales operate at a covert level, just as Walker also suggested.

Rahman references an argument by Bettelheim:

Fairy tales offer a new dimension to a child’s imagination. Their imaginings can

influence their daydreams and aspirations. Tales speak to children in the language of

symbols. They enter a wondrous world where normal logic and rules of causation are

suspended, with imaginary places and people, and at the story’s end, they are returned to

reality in a reassuring manner. (as cited in Rahman, 2017, p. 341

Bettelheim’s argument seems to be influential in Rahman’s interest in the topic and, therefore,

behind the overall study. The study he performed consisted of interviewing 217 mothers of

preschool to junior high-age children in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, and the focus of the

questions was fairy tales (Rahman, 2017, p. 342).

Based on the study, some benefits of telling fairy tales to children are as follows:

 Enriching the vocabulary of children

 Stimulating the imagination and creative power of children

 Training the children’s ability to listen

 Introducing children to new things including new basic knowledge

 Developing powers of expression: the more children listen, the more easily

they talk and express their opinion. (Rahman, 2017, p. 341)

Thus, we can see the influence telling fairy tales has on children, whether they hear them

while at daycare, from parents, or from siblings. They provide children with some of the tools

they require to excel in life and achieve higher standards than they might if they were lacking

those tools.
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In the article, “It’s Story Time!: Exploring the Potential of Multimodality in Oral

Storytelling to Support Children’s Vocabulary Learning,” author Lwin (2016) talks about how

influential and perhaps even crucial storytelling is toward developing a child’s sense of language

and vocabulary. “[T]hrough storytelling children encounter a broad range of language . . . which

establishes an extensive oral language base to build literacy skills such as word recognition and

the use of elaboration” (p. 73).

Walker (2010), then, further explains how storytelling can influence not only their

vocabulary, but also their take on life experiences and hard to understand concepts such as grief

and loss:

. . . in the act of reading or listening to a fairy story a child can dislocate himself from

reality and begin to accept the uncanny as familiar. And, in separating in this way, the

young person can gain access to prepressed feelings or in other words allow the

unfamiliar to become familiar. (p. 87)

Discussion

“Stories convey complex meanings and facilitate understanding of human experience”

(Scaletti & Hocking, 2010, para. 1). As people, we search for meaning and connection in our

lives. Oftentimes, it can be difficult to find a connection through something such as a shared

experience when we come from different backgrounds and cultures – society is so diverse today,

that it can be difficult to find someone who has shared your experiences. Or, if we can find those

people, sometimes it is difficult to breach the subject and therefore create that connection with

the person. Stories, on the other hand, have this unique way of connecting people not only from

the same backgrounds and ethnicities, but from others as well. Consider the many different

languages that the Bible or popular books have been translated into. Think of the well-known
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book series, Harry Potter – it has been translated into 68 different languages and distributed

throughout 200 territories (Scholastic, n.d., The Books sections, para. 9). Talk about connecting

cultures.

In the article, “The Secrets of Storytelling: Our Love for Telling Tales Reveals the

Workings of the Mind,” which was published in the popular journal, Scientific American Mind in

2008, Hsu writes:

We tell stories about other people and for other people. Stories help us keep tabs on what

is happening in our communities. The safe, imaginary world of a story may be a kind of

training ground, where we can practice interacting with others and learn the customs and

rules of society. And stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they

appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy. (para. 3)

The stories that make up fairy tales, myths, and legends, are unique in that capacity to

exist in, and thereby connect, all cultures spanning not only the different groups within one state,

country, or even just one continent. Stories span across the entire globe, thereby connecting

peoples across the globe as well.

Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and

through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in

ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian.

People in societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer

tribes to the millions fo writers churning out books, televisions shows and movies. (Hsu,

2008, para. 4)

What is it that makes storytelling so universal across cultures? Why is it that stories are

able to have such a power on the imagination that they can literally influence whether a child or
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young adult has a solid grasp on reality and knows how to confront it when the time comes?

What makes stories withstand the test of time so that they continue to linger in the current world,

just as popular now and they once were with children growing up before the middle ages?

Empathy.

Empathy is part of the larger ability humans have to put themselves in another person’s

shoes: we can attribute mental state – awareness, intent – to another entity. Theory of

mind, as this trait is known, is crucial to social interaction and communal living – and to

understanding stories. (Hsu, 2008, para. 10)

The famous author, J.K. Rowling, also spoke about empathy in her Harvard Commencement

speech in 2008. She said:

Imagination is not the only uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and

therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most

transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enable us to empathize with

humans whose experiences we have never shared. (J.K. Rowling Harvard

Commencement Speech, video file)

By encouraging children to use their imagination, through telling stories and seeking to expand

their minds on a social and cultural level, we are, essentially, teaching children how to empathize

with one another which, as Hsu mentioned, is crucial for community living. Our human societies

cannot exist without empathy.

Conclusion

To be human is to empathize. People, of all ages in all societies, learn how to empathize

from a young age through the stories they are told as children from their parents at bedtime. They

exercise this ability as they read stories and watch movies as they grow.
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It offers them the ability to expand their emotional intelligence and they are able to then

grow within society. Stories are found in every culture across every nation and they are the

thread that connects all of humanity across the globe – reaching peoples through the uniquely

human ability of empathy.

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References

J.K. Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech, Harvard University Commencement 2008.

[Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibfDUPJAEU

Hsu, J. (2008). The secrets of storytelling: Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the

mind. Scientific American Mind, 19(4), 46-51. Retrieved from http://www.dr-

hatfield.com/educ538/docs/Hsu,+2008.pdf

Lwin, S. M. (2016). It’s story time!: Exploring the potential of multimodality in oral storytelling

to support children’s vocabulary learning. Literacy, 50(2), 72-82. Retrieved from

https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12075

Rahman, F. (2017). The revival of local fairy tales for children education. Theory and Practice in

Language Studies, 7(5), 336-344. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0705.02

Scaletti, R. & Hocking, C. (2010). Healing through storytelling: An integrated approach for

children experiencing grief and loss. New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy,

57(2), 66-71. Abstract retrieved from EbscoHost in Informit New Zealand Collection

database. (Accession No. 431279734356318)

Scholastic. (n.d.) Meet Author J.K. Rowling. Retrieved from

http://harrypotter.scholastic.com/jk_rowling/

Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library. (n.d.). What is Folklore? Retrieved from

https://www.library.illinois,edu/sshel/specialcollections.folklore/definition

Stadler, M. & Ward, G. C. (2005). Supporting the narrative development of young children.

Early Childhood Education Journal, 33(2), 73-80. DOI: 10.1007/s10643-005-0024-4

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Tsitsani, P., Psyllidou, S., Batzios, S. P., Livas, S., Ouranos, M., & Cassimos, D. (2011). Fairy

tailes: A compass for children’s healthy development – a qualitative study in a Greek

island. Child: care, health and development, 38(2), 266-272. DOI: 10.1111/J.1365-

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Walker, S. (2010). Young people’s mental health: The spiritual power of fairy stories, myths and

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10.1080/13674670903196721