Individuality of Narratives Generated by Individuals: An Investigation Using Four-Panel Comics

In this study, we conducted an empirical research focusing on the generation of stories to obtain a hypothesis on how different the stories that people generate in their daily lives by linking events and situations are. For this purpose, five illustrations that revealed only the first and fourth panels of a four-panel comic were used as stimuli to generate a narrative in which the participants could make a connection between them. A total of 40 stories were obtained from eight participants. As a result, the narrative emerged in a variety of ways, even in events with little personal connection to the participants. This reveals that there are individual differences in the way people generate narratives themselves, despite their relationship with and position on the event. When the stories were typified, none of the participants generated similar stories in all five illustrations. This suggests that, because the combination of stories a person creates about every event is unique, there is only one story about the world, and one about himself/herself.