What Do Oxytocin and Cortisol Have to Do With Fundraising?

Sometimes, I just feel like I don't know as much as I thought. I am absolutely impressed with the study that is described in this YouTube video.

Don't let the title of this blog post scare you off. And, watch the whole video to understand the lengths these researchers went through to understand what really happens to someone when that person hears a story and how "Empathy, Neurochemistry, and the Dramatic Arc" truly affect fundraising.

Here's the summary:

• The first part of the video is actually a story about a father and a son, and the dynamic between them and some key emotions. For those of you who don't like sad stories — do not close out of the video. It is just a setup to how the researchers conducted their study and what they showed their study participants.
• The art of storytelling is, indeed, more than just art. There is a proven approach and process to good storytelling. The challenge is that in this study, people had a hard time explaining how they truly felt after hearing the story, but it was clear they were impacted by the story.
• The science part of this study identified that the people hearing this story had two chemical releases in the bloodstream.
• Cortisol was released in the subjects, and this is associated with the ability to focus and pay attention. However, the connection to the story was around the distress the person experienced when hearing the story. The more distress people felt, the more cortisol they released, which caused them to focus more intently on the issue.
• Oxytocin, which is associated with care, connection and empathy, was the second chemical released by the subjects studied. The more empathy with the story they felt, the more oxytocin they released.

But the study doesn't stop there. After researchers understood the chemical reactions that were happening during the storytelling, they added the opportunity to "share money" with a stranger and/or make donations.