The Narrative Intelligence Project
Narrative Intelligence is a human capacity for working consciously with the stories through which we interpret experience.
The Narrative Intelligence Project is an interdisciplinary inquiry into narrative, identity, behavior, culture, power, and human agency, carried forward through research, field building, and public scholarship.
It asks how people recognize the narratives shaping perception, evaluate them against reality, remain open to other possibilities, exercise meaningful choice, and translate that choice into how they live.
Research & public scholarship
Episodes 21–30 · October 26, 2026
A progress report from 100 Stories: why the assessment no longer gives a number, what ten more guests did to the framework, and the question now at its center.
Read the articleThe first twenty conversations · September 24, 2026
A progress report from 100 Stories: what has held up in the Narrative Intelligence framework, what has been complicated, and what hasn’t held up at all.
Read the articleThe inquiry
Human beings enter worlds already filled with narrative.
Families, cultures, religions, institutions, communities, and histories carry stories about who we are, what matters, who belongs, and what is possible. Some are consciously taught. Others are transmitted through behavior, expectation, repetition, silence, and belonging.
By the time we are capable of examining them, some may no longer feel like narratives at all. They may feel like reality.
We do not start as authors. We start as inheritors.
Narrative Intelligence begins when narratives that may have been shaping us long before conscious awareness become available for relationship. The research asks what becomes possible from there.
Current working model
01 · See
What narrative is shaping how I see this?
02 · Sort
What is actually true, and what am I interpreting?
03 · Expand
What else could this mean?
04 · Choose
Given what I know, what do I choose?
05 · Live
What would that choice look like in how I actually live or act?
These are working constructs under investigation, not established scientific dimensions — and not a fixed sequence, stage model, or universal intervention.
Hard questions
The goal is not to prove Narrative Intelligence. The goal is to find out what is true.
What we are investigating now
When does changed meaning become changed action?
How do inherited and cultural narratives become part of who we believe ourselves to be?
Who has the power to make an interpretation consequential for other people?
Do governing narratives about identity, competence, status, and the future help explain why people embrace or resist new technology?
Can the proposed five capacities be defined and measured reliably?
Does the framework hold outside Western individualist assumptions?
These are active research questions, not settled claims.
Public inquiry
100 Stories brings researchers, leaders, artists, practitioners, and people from many disciplines and lived experiences into the inquiry. The conversations are not designed to confirm the framework — they find where it holds, where it breaks, and what other disciplines already understand better.
Listen to 100 StoriesIn practice
The Narrative Intelligence Project is Paige Williams's contribution to a larger, evolving inquiry. StoryKeys is one place where her framework becomes usable in practice, through workshops, leadership development, and assessments. The research informs the practice; the practice generates new questions for the research.
Read the full research overview