Why do we love stories so much? Objectively speaking, it seems counterintuitive. We listen with rapt attention once we know that we are hearing about something that doesn’t exist, and in fact has no literal correspondence with the real world.
I suspect that it has a lot to do with our development as a social species. Our survival as a species is linked with our development of natural language. For early humans, tribal cohesion was greatly enhanced by the ability to sit around together and tell stories, whether of myth or of tribal lore.
It is now likely baked deep into our brain that we feel pleasure when somebody starts telling us a story. If it is a good and well formed story, then we integrate the telling, fictional as the content may be, as a life experience.
This has implications for education. More tomorrow.