By W.A. Wijewardena –

Dr. W.A Wijewardena

Joint Nobel laureate in economics in 2013, Robert Shiller published his masterpiece in economics under the title ‘Narrative Economics’ in 2019 which was in the bestselling list of the New York Times for months. The subtitle of the book ‘How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events’ tells us the full story: stories are there, and we believe them, and we make decisions by being influenced by those beliefs. His book has in fact now given rise to a new branch in economics called narrative economics which is being studied under the common behavioural economics.

According to Shiller, the brains of the Homo sapiens, unlike the brains of the other lower species, are attuned to stories, whether they are true or false. Hence, it does not matter whether they are factual or not. People use the stories so planted in them to justify ongoing actions, when choices are made for consumption, investment, or choosing or rejecting a political leader. People have values or needs deeply rooted in them. Stories help them to get connected to such values and needs making a part of their life. That would motivate them to do what they do, sometimes perfectly rational and some other times, grossly absurd.

The story that vaccination is the scientific method to ward off the COVID-19 virus forced millions of people worldwide to go for it. At the same time, the story that a shaman medicine like Dhammika Peniya, a syrup propagated by a shaman called Dhammika, would do the same job compelled many millions in Sri Lanka to have a dose of it to make them safe from the same virus. The absurdity of this latter story can be found in Sri Lanka’s lady minister of health publicly having a dose of the Peniya and getting herself infected by the virus. These stories which Shiller calls narratives go viral and spread far, even worldwide, influencing global events. For instance, Shiller says that the Depression of 1920-21, the Great Depression of 1930s, the Great Recession of 2007-9, and the other contentious political situations in the globe today have been the results of stories or narratives that went viral at the respective times.

Stories shape human minds and influence choices

The Harvard psychologist David McClelland and Oxford educated historian Yuval Noah Harari too have emphasised on the importance of stories in shaping human minds and influencing their choices. McClelland says that stories that we learn in our childhood from mothers and grandmothers compel us to develop within ourselves the need for achievement – called n-Ach by him – in later life. If motivating stories are told, we become high achievers and if stories in the opposite are told, underperformers in our adult life.

Likewise, Yuval Noah Harari says in his bestselling book titled Sapiens that history is nothing, but a series of stories told to us by our own ancestors. He says that Sapiens conquered the world because this species could tell stories that inspire the members of the same species to cooperate in very large numbers. Hence, wars were waged, or countries were developed through the positive impact of stories told to them.

When President John F. Kennedy addressed the US Congress on 25 May 1961, he is said to have used the storytelling masterfully to convince the Americans that that nation should explore the moon. His story was that ‘space’ was a ‘new ocean’ to explore and the US would set sail on this new sea to gain hopes for knowledge and peace. It is said that his passion, vision, and storytelling skills galvanised the entirety of American people to support him in his new adventure. It was a medium to long-term vision and USA was able to land a man on the moon many years after Kennedy’s death.

Harari, therefore, says that stories are the greatest human invention that can work either way, for advancement or destruction of humankind. People need stories to cooperate with each other. If stories can change the way people interact with each other, it is not a bad political exercise to create stories to influence their behaviour. This applies to the whole range of human behaviour: religion, politics, culture, consumption, or investment. It is pretty much present at the time of elections.

All civilisations throughout history have used stories to impart knowledge and wisdom to their members. This was typical in countries in the Indian subcontinent. The Jataka stories that talk about the past lives of the Buddha had been a very powerful conveyor of ethics, morality, and discipline to their readers. Likewise, Panchatantra, containing several books of animal stories, has been the ground level textbook for anyone wishing to take a strategic position in society, no matter whether it is in business, simple household management or government. In ancient Lanka, Buddhism at a laymen’s level has been taught by erudite Bhikkhus and lay scholars through both prose and verse that can be read aloud at an audience. All these instances are stories doing good for the readers or listeners. But they can be used in a negative sense by creating fake stories to vilify a person too. In this social media era, they can spread virally doing the damage before the victim even realises it.

The problem with stories is that when they are planted in people to suit their values and needs, they can be driven en masse to vote for or reject a particular candidate. Thus, the stories so planted can be positive or inspiring, on one side, or negative or repulsive, on the other.

Politicians who are very smart in this game have used either of this technique throughout the country’s electoral history for personal gains or for vilifying their opponents. A vilifying story that went viral in the 1956 general election was that the incumbent premier hosting a garden party and indulging in a roasted calf imbibing in imported alcohol, a luxury item at that time, surrounded by beautiful young girls. The moral of the story was that if he were elected to power, he would liberally destroy the country’s wealth and culture. The very same party created a story to vilify the leftists at the election that if they came to power, they would destroy Buddhism just like the Chinese Communist Party had done to Tibet, a predominantly Buddhist country. Both stories went viral but the first one more viral leading to the defeat of the ruling political party at the elections.

Voters are in a dilemma

The current Presidential election is full of such stories planted in the voters by all the candidates contesting the election. There have been positive stories to support their cause and negative stories to vilify their opponents. Hence, voters are in a dilemma. They should gain the capacity to identify the true stories that canvass for the candidates and reject the vilifying stories that have been created against the other candidates. This is a moment in which such a wisdom is needed on the part of the voters.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe who contests the election as an independent candidate supported by a breakaway group of SLPP and several other backers of his presidency is a master storyteller. He has created the story that it was only him who accepted the challenge of running the country when it was bankrupt and his two rivals, Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake had run away from it. This story has been repeated by his supporters too.

In the first place, Sri Lanka had not been bankrupted as the Central Bank in its Annual Economic Review 2023 had put it correctly as ‘the deepest economic downturn in its post-independence history’. Bankruptcy means a state in which a country not having sufficient assets to meet the loans from foreign sources. Sri Lanka was not in this state. Its problem was a liquidity issue in which it did not have sufficient foreign exchange reserves or quick borrowing facilities to meet the loan repayment obligations.

The first issue is a deficiency in Sri Lanka’s asset management. The second one posits a similar deficiency in its liability management. Once these issues are resolved, the country could carry on as it had done before. The second claim that his political rivals had run away from responsibility was also not true. They fielded a candidate to contest with him when Parliament met to select a president for the interim period. However, this story is repeated ad nauseum at election platforms and press conferences to vilify his political rivals. There is a danger in doing so because the initial shock caused by a negative story fades away fast once the human brain is exposed to a negative story again and again. At that point, the negative story becomes a qualification for the rivals in politics rather than a vilification.

He is also good at drawing humour from his audience by creating and relating stories when other politicians talk in serious language that cannot be understood by their respective audiences. In a recent gathering of indigenous medical practitioners, he equated the issue before the country to a patient who has already been cured by using the best physicians engaged from multilateral lending organisations, foreign countries of worth and his own acumen in handling a case of such a seriously ill patient. He said that the medicine administered was bitter but necessary. But now some physicians whose credentials are not known are trying to put the already cured patient back to sickbed.

Very powerful communication

This was a very powerful communication, but it contained some inaccuracies that could not be immediately recognised by the audience. The patient has not been cured as he had claimed, still faces critical issues of stability, deprivation, poverty, inequitable wealth sharing, serious debt management issues, to mention but a few. Hence, the other physicians are required to do a lot to take him out of the sickbed by adopting a novel treatment procedure. While enjoying the joke in the story which is a must by every listener, he should be able to understand the gross inaccuracies hidden from the audience by converting them to a jocular mood.

Another story going viral in social media, especially on Facebook and TikTok, has been the results claimed to be from polls surveys. These stories have been created by all the three main contenders to presidency, namely, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake. You can predict the results depending on whose survey is being perused. If it is Ranil’s group, he will surely get more than 70%, Sajith’s, same tally for him, and Anura’s, even more than 70%. If done correctly following accepted survey methods, these polls surveys can give a broad picture of the preferences of voters. Some of these surveys present the predictions about the national level, some the district level, and many even at the electoral division level. They even predict the number of votes which each candidate will poll at the election. This may be appealing to the diehard fans of each of the candidates. However, they have a serious issue about the objectivity, accuracy, and predictability.

No one can conduct a 100% census to find the number of votes polled by each candidate. That will be done only by the Election Commission on 21 September 2024, the date fixed for election. It is a massive exercise needing about Rs. 10 billion to conduct. Hence, if it is a field level survey to find the preferences of the voters, it should be a sample survey. The bigger and the more representative of the sample, higher the accuracy. However, it is costly in terms of money as well as time. Hence, the conductors of surveys resort to small samples and seek to multiply results to make it represent the national level preferences of voters. But in many cases, those samples are very small. For instance, the survey conducted by the Centre for Policy Alternatives in July 2024 to compile the confidence in Democratic Governance Index had a sample of only 1,352 persons. As a share of the population above 18 years that amount to about 17 million, this sample is even smaller than a fraction of a decimal point. Hence, the results of this survey should be read with this deficiency in mind.

Fake survey results

But what is presented by political fans as survey results are the desk level calculations by assigning favourable shares to their candidate from the results of the Presidential election of 2019. Since Gotabaya Rajapaksa is no more at the election this year, the 6.9 million votes he polled are distributed among the three candidates according to the pre-determined shares. Accordingly, if Sajith had polled the largest number of votes at that election, he will end up polling the largest number in the present election too. But for electoral divisions where Gota had polled the largest number of votes, but the candidate for whom the present prediction is made will poll the largest number. Hence, this candidate will win the election. These are therefore stories created by fans of presidential candidates to convince the uninitiated voters that their candidate will win the election. Hence, if voters need to make a choice based on the policies proposed by each candidate, they should avoid referring to those fake survey results.

So, stories are good, necessary, and inspiring, if they have been created with the objective of helping people. But they are damaging, if the objective has been to promote someone who does not have the required qualities or to vilify a rival candidate. Hence, voters should not fall for these created stories.

*The writer, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com