Writes the psychologist Professor Carol Tavris, ‘Without feeling attached to groups that give our lives meaning, identity and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation that we were loose marbles floating in a random universe. We will do all it takes to preserve these attachments.’

To achieve identification, we must understand our audience’s story-world – their heroes, villains, values, fears, hopes, obstacles and goals – and somehow reflect it back to them.

We use inferences about causality to tell sense-making stories about the world.

This characteristically human combination of optimism and deservingness is critical to good mental health.

Groups can define their overall mission in two different ways: competence and virtue.

Our brains are programmed to connect with other brains and turn reality into a shared narrative.

Compelling stories are fuelled by information about obstacles and goals. When a human brain detects this pattern, it tends to become interested.

Emotional moments in story tend to happen when we identify with a character, and that character then experiences peak moments in their struggle against obstacles in pursuit of the goals of survival, connection and status. We emotionally connect to characters who feel in some way like people-like-us, understanding and responding to the world in the

a phenomenon I called ‘active belief’, in which a person doesn’t just passively accept some idea about the world, but acts that belief out, arguing for it and living by its instruction as if controlled by a parasite.