Storytelling in Intelligence: Theoretical Foundations

Tim Van Gelder, Morgan Saletta, Richard De Rozario, Ashley Barnett, Tim Dwyer, Kadek Satriadi, and Christine Shahan Brugh.

Intelligence analysts frequently generate and assess “stories” to describe and explain what is going on in some situation. This activity has had little theoretical attention. The term narrative abduction is used for the processes by which reasoners estimate the plausibility of explanatory stories. This article provides a theoretical framework with analyses of key concepts, including narratives, narrative truth, narrative plausibility, and explanation. It then presents a normative proto-theory based on the idea that the ideal rational analyst would assess plausibility by reference to four epistemic criteria: explanatory power, narrative development, substantiation, and durability. It also presents a descriptive proto-theory, grounded in prior work in the cognitive science of intelligence analysis, which holds that analysts acquire an intuitive, holistic sense of the plausibility of candidate narratives over the course of attempting to identify and develop the strongest candidate; these intuitive assessments can be crystallized into explicit judgments and rationalized using selected considerations as arguments. These points are illustrated with a new kind of diagram for displaying the structure of narrative abduction challenges. Finally, it sketches the kinds of further research that would be needed to develop proper theories building on the theoretical framework and proto-theories.

Van Gelder, T., Saletta, M., De Rozario, R., Barnett, A., Dwyer, T., Satriadi, K., & Brugh, C. S. (2025). Storytelling in Intelligence: Theoretical Foundations. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 1-33.