The Story Behind Our Stories
New research reveals why humans dedicate countless hours to crafted falsehoods and how fiction evolved as entertainment technology
In societies around the globe, people are reading novels, watching films, binge-watching series, and playing video games. They are consuming narrative fictions—stories everyone understands are not true. This behavior isn't just common; it's expanding at lightning speed, with the global video game industry alone now worth an estimated $200 billion 1 3 .
For decades, scientists have grappled with a fundamental puzzle: Why would humans, a species so successful, devote countless hours to crafting and consuming falsehoods? Is this a biological adaptation, or merely a byproduct of our powerful brains? New research suggests the answer is a fascinating blend of both, proposing that fictions are entertainment technologies—cultural inventions designed to capture our attention by co-opting our ancient mental preferences 1 2 3 .
From an evolutionary perspective, spending energy on activities that are not directly related to survival seems counterintuitive. So, why fiction?
"If the goal is to transmit important, factual information, why invent false content? A factual account or a documentary is a more efficient way to convey truth."
For a long time, the dominant theories suggested that fiction must be a direct biological adaptation. They proposed that stories served as simulations for real life, allowing us to safely practice social skills, rehearse dangerous scenarios, or learn about the world 1 3 . While these ideas are compelling, they face a significant logical hurdle: the problem of specificity 1 .
Fiction as a direct biological adaptation that helps us practice for real life.
Fiction as a cultural invention that taps into our cognitive preferences.
This is where the entertainment technology hypothesis offers a fresh perspective. It posits that fiction is not a hardwired cognitive module, but a brilliant cultural invention. Humans discovered they could craft items—stories—that tap into our pre-existing cognitive preferences, such as our innate fascination for social information and our ability to imagine counterfactuals 1 2 3 .
The proximate, or immediate, goal of these technologies is simple: to grab and hold our attention. The ultimate, evolutionary reason is that once you have someone's attention, you can achieve other beneficial goals, such as social bonding, status gain, or cultural influence 1 5 . This explains why fictions are so filled with exaggerated stimuli and why they constantly evolve to become more attractive—they are products of a cultural arms race for our interest 1 .
If fiction is a technology that evolves culturally, we should be able to trace its history and see it becoming more sophisticated and prevalent over time. A landmark 2025 study did exactly that, undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the rise of fictiveness across human narratives 6 .
The research team analyzed massive datasets totaling over 65,000 works, including movies, literary works, and manga, from over 30 countries and spanning from 2000 BCE to 2020 CE 6 . To manage this vast amount of data, they introduced a clear and measurable concept: fictiveness. This is defined as the degree to which a story departs from reality in its protagonists, events, and settings 6 .
The analysis revealed a steady and dramatic increase in fictiveness across all narrative forms, culminating in the 20th and 21st centuries 6 .
Classical Greece
Known places & figures (e.g., The Iliad) with low fictiveness scores.
European Renaissance
Mix of historical and invented elements with medium fictiveness scores.
20th/21st Century
Fully imagined worlds (e.g., The Lord of the Rings) with high fictiveness scores.
| Era | Fictiveness |
|---|---|
| Ancient World | Low |
| Pre-Modern | Medium |
| Modern | High |
| Dimension | Low vs High |
|---|---|
| Protagonists | Historical vs Invented |
| Settings | Real vs Imagined |
| Events | Plausible vs Impossible |
Interestingly, this rise was not constant. Peaks of fictiveness were associated with affluent and stable periods in history, such as the height of the Roman Empire, the Tang Dynasty in China, and the European Renaissance 6 . This suggests that the cultural evolution of fiction flourishes when societies have the resources and stability to support such creative endeavors.
Understanding a cultural phenomenon like fiction requires a multidisciplinary approach. Researchers employ a diverse set of tools to dissect how stories work and why they spread.
Automate large-scale analysis of narrative content across thousands of texts 6 .
The human capacity to understand others' mental states, prerequisite for recognizing fiction 6 .
Measure real-world social behaviors and correlate them with storytelling skill .
Trace the descent and modification of stories across generations and cultures.
Viewing fiction as an entertainment technology does not make it evolutionarily trivial. On the contrary, being a good storyteller can bring tangible benefits. A study of the Agta, a hunter-gatherer population in the Philippines, found that skilled storytellers were not only more popular but were also twice as likely to be chosen as desirable social partners than even skilled foragers .
more living children
more likely as social partners
Accomplished Agta storytellers had, on average, 0.53 more living children than others .
This social prestige translates into real reproductive success. The research found that accomplished Agta storytellers had, on average, 0.53 more living children than others . This provides a clear, Darwinian explanation for the value of this skill: storytelling fosters social cohesion and cooperation, and those who excel at it are rewarded with status and support, ultimately enhancing their genetic legacy .
The human obsession with fiction is no evolutionary mistake. It is the product of our unique cognitive abilities meeting the power of cultural evolution. Fictions are not biological adaptations in themselves, but highly refined cultural technologies that cleverly exploit our innate love for social information and imaginative play 1 . They evolved because they are effective at capturing our most precious resource—attention—and because those who mastered them historically reaped social and even biological rewards .
"As these entertainment technologies continue to evolve, from ancient oral tales to immersive virtual realities, they remain a testament to a profoundly human truth."
As these entertainment technologies continue to evolve, from ancient oral tales to immersive virtual realities, they remain a testament to a profound truth: that one of the most fundamentally human traits is our endless desire to get lost in a good story, and in doing so, to better understand ourselves and the world we've built together.