Dark Side of Stories

Rhetorical Analysis for https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_duncan_the_dark_side_of_storytelling

"The Dark Side of Story Telling" is a TED talk given by Suzanna Duncan, this TED talk serves to highlight the ways in which storytelling in our daily life can have unintentional negative consequences. She explains that in a research study she had done of investment professionals to understand why the industries business model is broken. Her results showed her that stories were the leading cause, or is psychology terms, an attribution bias, which buts blame of positive things internally and negative externally. She then pulls in a personal example of her utilizing this attribution bias with her hobby of horse shows, where it negatively effects her because she is unable to internalize the criticisms of her trainer and thus fails to improve. She follows this with a reference to how a story created in a teenagers head lead to the largest act of domestic terrorism in America, and how this was due to all the fictional stories he told himself, and ultimately believed to be the truth. Transitioning to a lighter note, she addresses the audience and begins to tell the audience how they can avoid being negatively impacted by the daily fictions we tell ourselves, this is done through learning how to learn and lie detect. She goes on to explore how those two things mean to be able to recognize patterns in your stories and ultimately be able to reflect without the presence of the attribution bias.

Suzanna Duncan is the senior vice president of State Street's Center for Applied Research, lending her information the needed to create an ethos response to what she's delivering. The audience is able to use the established credibility and just from the introduction of her position to begin to have a bias in believing her superiority in the field which she will be having her discussion in, even though its notable that her superiority label has nothing to do with stories. With this established, the proceeding discussion of attribution bias already has an appeal to the logos of the audience, which goes further as she begins to dive into the examples, which spark understanding and relatability in the audience, thus appealing to their logical side, that yes, in fact, what she's saying does make sense.

Another aspect of these examples is how she uses pathos to envoke an emotional response from the audience by referencing an instance of massive loss of life. Pathos in this instance is useful for her argument because it creates not just a familiar connection but also an emotion one, strengthening her argument. Finally, the majority of the argument is presented near the end, where the audience is already brought in through the rhetorical devices and thus will be more susceptible to her suggestions. In watching this, I feel myself fully connecting to the message she is delivering. Her personal story leads me to think of my own and makes me feel a need to address this potentially negative situation which has now been clearly identified for me.