Design For How People Learn (Eva Spring's Library) by Julie Dirksen

Author:Julie Dirksen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Riders
Published: 2012-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

Emotional Resonance

Stories have an emotional resonance that can help us form opinions and make decisions. You don’t just want people to learn things—you want them to be able to act on what they learn, and emotional context helps them do that.

For a long time, there was a myth of “rational decision-making”—that the best way to make decisions was to rationally weigh the pros and cons, and not let messy emotions interfere.

Antonio Damasio, a behavioral neuroscientist, examined this idea by looking at patients who had brain damage in certain areas of the brain that support emotion. Rather than being clear and incisive decision-makers due to the absence of emotions, these patients found even simple decision-making to be extremely difficult. We seem to need an emotional “tug” to help us decide.

When we teach people facts, stripped of broader context, we make it hard for those learners to act on that information. Of course, the necessity of emotional context varies depending on the subject matter. If I’m creating learning materials to teach bar staff how to use a cash register, I’m not going to be overly concerned with the emotional context. If I’m teaching that same group how to ensure they aren’t serving alcohol to underage or overly intoxicated drinkers, I’m going to be much more concerned about the emotional context.

Take a look at the following statement from a sales course:

The sales commission on repeat sales is 10%.

This looks like the mother of all objective facts, right? Just another certainty to put on your list. But what happens if we add a little emotional context to that fact?

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