Heider & Simmel (1944)

‘an experiment by psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel… After showing this film to research subjects, Heider and Simmel gave them a simple task: “Describe what you saw.” It’s fascinating to note that only 3 of the 114 subjects gave a truly reasonable answer. These people reported seeing geometric shapes moving around a screen, and that was all. But the rest of Heider and Simmel’s subjects were like me; they didn’t see fleshless and bloodless shapes sliding around. They saw operas: doors slamming, courtship dances, the foiling of a predator.’

Jonathan Gottschall - The Storytelling Animal

#storytelling