What the Heider-Simmel Illusion teaches us about the power of a good story

In 1944, right at the end of World War II, 34 Massachusetts college students were shown a short film: two and a half minutes of geometric shapes moving across a two-dimensional plane.

The viewers watched a dramatic story unfold before their eyes. Within those shapes were conflict-ridden characters with emotion, motive, and purpose, navigating through an elaborate narrative. Over the course of that two minutes and 30 seconds, powerful, universal themes unfolded with heroes, victims, and antagonists. A love story, a fight, a chase.

Only one of the test subjects saw the abstract portrayal for what it really was: two triangles and a circle moving in and out of a larger, partly-open rectangle.

This landmark study of apparent behavior became known as the Heider-Simmel Illusion, named after its authors—Marianne Simmel, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, and Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider.

Stories are so valuable to us and we are so greedy for them, the study found, that we impulsively grasp for their patterns even when they’re not there. Distilled down, the Heider-Simmel Illusion underscores a valuable lesson no brand can afford to overlook: Stories are how human beings think.

You can watch the video here.