Fritz Breithaupt

Narrative Communication

Empathy

Transformative Experience

Aesthetics

Emotions

Research Synopsis

How do we make sense of our world by means of storytelling? What stories do we tell? How do stories and narratives enable us to co-experience the world of others? What triggers and what blocks different forms of empathy?

These are some of the questions, my lab and I tackle. In the past decade, our lab has pioneered work on narrative, empathy, and transformative experience. We have conducted the largest story-retelling studies to date in the Telephone Game format, and found what anchors a story as it travels: emotions. We have provided evidence that empathy can fuel polarization. And in new studies, we investigate how the mere retelling of a meaningful memory can have therapeutic effects.