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FOR A MOMENT, MAYBE [PREPRINT]
For a Moment, Maybe:
A Study of the Incidence and Duration of Art Exhibition-Induced Prosocial Attitude
Change Using a Two-Week Daily Diary Method.
Matthew Pelowski*1,2, Katherine Cotter3, Eva Specker1, Joerg Fingerhut4, MacKenzie Trupp1,
Klaus Speidel5,6
1: Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna,
2: Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, University of Vienna
3: Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania
4: Berlin School of Mind & Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
5: University of Applied Arts Vienna
6: Paris College of Art
* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matthew Pelowski, Faculty of
Psychology, University of Vienna, Wächtergasse 1/306, 1010 Vienna, Austria. E-mail:
matthew.pelowski@univie .ac.at
Author Note
We would like to thank the Dom Museum and specifically its director, Johanna
Schwanberg, as well as Katja Brandes, the head of educational programs, for their trust and
collaboration.
The writing of this paper was supported by a grant to MP and JF from the EU Horizon
2020 TRANSFORMATIONS-17-2019, Societal Challenges and the Arts (870827 — ARTIS, Art
and Research on Transformations of Individuals of Society).
Draft version, posted on 20 December 2022.
This paper has not been peer reviewed. Please do not copy without author’s permission.
Liscence CC BY 4.0.
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Abstract
The use of art installations to mediate people’s responses toward societal challenges—
climate change, refugees, general prosocialness—is emerging as a main interest for arts
institutions, artists, policy, and, recently, empirical study. However, there is still much need for
data regarding whether and in what ways we might find detectable change. Even more, important
questions concern whether typical methods, with two data points and theoretical question
constructs, can reliably detect subtle impacts and, even if we do find change, how long effects
last—a question which is almost completely unanswered in empirical research. We assessed an
exhibition focused on power imbalances and acceptance for refugees, employing both a pre-post
design (Study 1) and (Study 2) a daily diary method, which tracked participants’ reports, over
two weeks, regarding how they had actually felt or acted each day and employing multilevel
modeling to assess estimating changes from a first baseline week. The pre-post paradigm
detected some reduction in self-assessed xenophobia and increased negative mood. However,
effects were small/inconsistent with also some intriguing suggestions that people self-assessed as
less empathic/prosocial than before visiting. The diary detected, inversely, several significant
quadratic trends involving increased empathic concern and prosocialness-related thoughts and
actions, but which returned to baseline by the next day. Only ‘trying to consider others feelings’
and ‘reflecting about oneself’ showed increases into the following week. Although non-
significant, the diary changes also suggested some negative relations with the hypothetical self-
assessment answers for the same questions, within participants, providing intriguing findings for
much future research.
Keywords: art intervention; societal challenges; attitude change; daily diary; impact
duration
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“On the night of the Sydney premiere [of his artwork (Human Flow) addressing the plight
of refugees], Ai Weiwei was asked if he felt that his film might make a difference. His answer…
‘For a very short moment, maybe.’ (in Mendelssohn, 2018)
Art, as a core component of human culture, plays a vital role in individual and social life.
Art offers a means of expression and communication. Art provides a way to explore our world,
our perceptions, our social and individual experiences (Pelowski, Markey et al., 2017), and has
been argued to be a distinguishing feature of the human species itself (Dissanayake, 2008;
Dutton, 2009). Art also, despite some philosophical arguments,
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has regularly been put to
pragmatic ends.
Art is used as a means of beautifying our environments (Hall & Robertson, 2010;
Mathews, 2010), recording important events (e.g., Deaton, 2015; Freedberg, 1989); providing a
sense of community (Hall & Robertson, 2010; Roberts et al., 2011), or economic exchange
(Becker, 1974). Art is also employed as a means for mental restoration (Packer & Bond, 2010),
alleviating stress (Fancourt et al., 2020), improving mood, well-being, and physical or mental
health (Trupp et al., 2022; see Cotter & Pawelski, 2022 and Fancourt & Finn, 2019 for reviews).
Increasingly, art has also been targeted at changing behaviors and thoughts. Although
certainly not new (see e.g., Kidd & Jackson, 2010; Moriuchi, 2014), the use of art has recently
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Perhaps best known is the idea of ‘Art for art's sake’ (L'art pour l'art), suggesting that ‘true art’
and artists should be divorced from utility (Goins, 2015; Zangwill, 1999). Summarized nicely by
novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (2003, p. 202), “Art… is that thing having only to do with itself—
the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art.” He continues, however, to provide a
succinct version of the counter-argument, as well as touching on a key question for the present
paper: “unfortunately, there are no examples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever
exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, everything with an end that
exists outside that thing, i.e., I want to sell this, or I want this to make me famous and loved, or I
want this to make me whole, or worse, I want this to make others whole” (italics added).
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been suggested as a solution for effecting change with a broad range of topics—such as shaping
attitudes about nature (Speidel 2020), climate change (Galafassi et al., 2018; Lee, 2021; Marinaro
& Flores, 2016; Marković & Petrović, 2021; Merrick, 2011; Pinsky & Sommer, 2020; Sommer &
Klöckner, 2021; Wehunt, 2014); refugees (Briciu, 2020; Mendelssohn, 2018; Papouli, 2017), the
homeless (Peters, 2019), or domestic violence (Walker, 2021); or for generally making
individuals more reflective and empathic citizens (Briciu 2020; Gerger et al., 2018; Pelowski et
al., 2020). Blockbuster examples include the installation of pieces of icebergs in front of
European government offices by Olafur Eliasson (Ice Watch, 2015), an inflatable sculpture
resembling a boat of refugees (Law of the Journey, 2017) by Ai Weiwei, as well as main themes
of recent major exhibitions (Venice Biennale, Davis, 2022; Documenta fifteen, 2022).
These initiatives operate in tandem with mandates from policy and funding bodies
(Belfiore & Bennett, 2010; Deaton, 2015; European Commission, Horizon 2020, 2019), art
institutions (Barbican Center, 2020; Bienkowski & McGowan, 2021; Bergevin, 2019; Camic &
Chatterjee, 2013; International Arts and Mind Lab, 2020; Koebner et al., 2018) and curatorial
practice (Cohen & Heinecke, 2018; Janes & Sandell, 2019). Because art represents such a unique
form of communication, a blending of perceptual, cognitive, and affective factors, as well as a
forum for provocative questions and of designing and sharing experiences—or so these initiatives
argue—art may provide a unique and promising means to achieve success (Hall & Robertson,
2010; Markovíc & Petrovíc, 2021; Roosen et al., 2017). As put by the curators for another recent
initiative (Tate, 2019), focused on this emerging use for art, “Art has the power to change public
debate because it has the power to change each of us, to shift ideas and sentiment.”
But, (How) Can we Detect Attitude and Behavior Change with Art?
At the same time, while holding much theoretical and pragmatic interest, the actual
efficacy of art interventions is still in need of much empirical research. To date, few studies have
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actually looked into the ability to detect change in people engaging with art—as this involves the
ability to assess impact on attitudes, ideas, and behavior (e.g., Aricat et al., 2014; Cavnar-
Lewandowski & Gavin, 2017; Hahn & Berkers, 2021; Keller et al., 2020; Klöckner & Sommer,
2021; Pitt, 2019; Sommer et al., 2019; Szubielska et al., 2022; see also studies using art
production, Atlas, 2009; Cavnar-Lewandowski & Gavin, 2017; Lopez, 2013; Papouli, 2017). For
comparison, a recent WHO scoping review, which focused on the arts’ ability to mediate
wellbeing, reported over 3000 studies (Fancourt & Finn, 2019).
One important challenge for empirical research on the arts is how we actually assess
participants. The majority of studies have used a design in which individuals are assessed after an
intervention. Many of these have reported some indication of impacts, suggesting that individuals
may show general agreement with statements supporting a chosen topic or may profess positive
attitudes about a target topic or group (Atlas, 2009; Hahn & Berkers, 2021; Keller et al., 2020;
Klöckner & Sommer, 2021; Papouli, 2017; Szubielska et al., 2022). However, by only having a
single assessment— a survey, interview, or anecdotal/pilot-level observation— that was
administered post-visit, those studies lack a baseline, cannot include time as a factor, and
therefore cannot detect changes in attitude or behavior attributed to the intervention itself.
To take one example, in a study by Keller et al. (2020), which asked individuals to view a
painting of stylized data lines (resembling line graphs) creating a landscape, but also
corresponding to indicators of the worsening climate situation, the authors report high agreement
with the pro-environmental statement “I plan to (continue to) deliberately act pro-
environmentally in my everyday life”. However, this leaves unanswered whether there was, in
fact, any attitude movement or how prior attitudes shaped findings. Notably, agreement did not
differ between conditions where the images’ meaning was or was not actually explained.
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Only a handful of studies have assessed attitudes both before and after interventions, and
results have been mixed, suggesting small effect sizes (e.g., Aricat et al., 2014; Sommer et al.,
2019; Zazulak et al., 2015) or showing no significant differences between art-based versus other
‘non-art’ or even non-topic-related interventions (e.g., Hahn & Berker, 2021; Pitt, 2019).
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This
leaves the entire assumption of art’s ability to effect behavioral or attitude change in doubt, has
led to arguments from policy, funding, and governmental bodies Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013;
Mendelssohn, 2019) questioning the efficacy of art for this purpose, and, more than anything,
calls for much more data and systematic assessments.
Are Even Two Datapoints Enough? The Need for Longitudinal, Embedded Assessments
Even given more evidence, there may still be key issues regarding how we detect and
track changes instilled by art. Pre-/post-intervention designs, while offering pragmatic advantages
in terms of control and access, might be impacted from a number of issues, which could tie to
many of the current ambiguous findings and raise important questions regarding effects.
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For example, Aricat et al. (2014) reported a study where post-secondary students viewed an art
exhibition in which the plight of migrant workers was depicted in various media. Answers to
surveys, pre-/post-viewing, showed only a change in one of three expected factors—a reduction
in professed identification with viewers’ own national identify—but no changes in measures
regarding acceptance towards or willingness to actively help immigrants. Sommer et al. (2019)
assessed an art installation meant to let participants experience different degrees of air pollution
in cities. Visitors showed increased agreement to “do something to actively prevent climate
change/environmental problems in the future” when measured pre-/post-visit. However, effect
sizes were d = 0.07, corresponding to a mean change of 0.1 on a 7-point scale. Pitt (2019)
reported a pre-/post- study on climate-change related music (Cheryl Leonard’s “Ablation Zone
from Antarctica: Music from the Ice,” 2014), meant to “viscerally or emotionally” connect
viewers with the impact of climate change, and contrasted against a scientific article, a
presentation of both article and music, and an unrelated musical piece (Mozart’s Piano Sonata
K.283 in G Major). The authors report small increases in implicit and explicit attitudes, however
with no differences between conditions (see similar results in Hahn & Berker, 2021).
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Pre/post methods may be prone to experimental artifacts. With an intervention overtly
targeting a certain theme, and with answers given in the presence of a researcher, even if
anonymized, it could be that participants feel pressure to report changes. Issues with external or
social context could also impact initial baseline reports, introducing ceiling or floor effects that
could obscure perhaps subtle, but real, intervention-related modifications. Other issues such as
the Hawthorne effect—while explicitly introducing an intervention—could lead to a temporary
change in reports or behavior (Snow, 1927; Pelowski et al., 2018 for review with art context; see
also the “placebo effect,” e.g., Meissner et al., 2011). Simply by asking participants to rate a
number of items, or by giving them a second chance to report, it is possible to elicit changes.
Individuals may shift their ratings as they become more familiar with a scale (Chen & Risen,
2010; Izuma & Murayama, 2013; Warren et al., 2011), or adjust reports to better reflect how they
actually feel (Solomon, 1949; Warren, 2011), while having little to do with presence or absence
of an intervention itself.
Initial instability, and thus need for repeat testing, is also specifically argued to occur
when preferences or opinions are constructed via context-related (i.e., intervention) learning
(Amir & Levav, 2008). Factors such mood, may show continuous fluctuations (see Egloff et al.,
1995; McFarlane et al., 1988; Ryan et al., 2010), and thus require multiple assessments to track
baselines and incidence of changes so as to avoid potential target factor-unrelated artifacts.
How Long Does an Effect Last?
The discussion of time and stability also raises a core question for any intervention: how
long might we actually detect impacts? To our knowledge, there have not been any studies
directly considering lasting impacts from single arts interventions, considering attitudes or
behavior. In fact, studies of temporal duration in any variety of intervention are largely only now
emerging (Lai et al., 2016; Rogers & Frey, 2014). A meta-analysis on experiments designed to
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change implicit associations (Forscher et al., unpublished; reported in Lai et al., 2016), for
example, revealed that only 3.7% of 585 studies examined whether change persisted beyond a
single session, with less than half suggesting that effects could persist. Digging into even these
candidates, Lai et al. (2016) tested nine interventions targeting implicit racial preferences, many
of which were formally similar to art (presenting stories with counter-stereotypical exemplars;
asking individual to view positively or negative-associated pictures). Across all interventions,
none maintained an effect in a follow-up test 24-96 hours later. See also Cracknell et al. (2016)
suggesting even more fleeting mood-related effects.
On the other hand, there are promising suggestions for more lasting impact, especially
with art. Holt (2020), from a study of art making workshops, provided weekly for 12 weeks,
report a linear increase in mood/wellbeing over the testing period. They also found relations
between the weekly-recorded increases in mood and global wellbeing reported at the beginning
and end of the entire study (see also Funch et al., 2007). Anecdotally, there is also a wealth of
reports of individuals having their lives, their self-images, and their worldviews permanently
marked and changed by art (e.g., Freedberg, 1989; Pelowski & Akiba, 2011). Similarly, questions
can also be raised regarding whether we might find different patterns depending on different
questions or assessments. Some responses might signal immediate changes, whereas other factors
might take longer to emerge following necessary reflection or other events (e.g., “sleeper effect,”
Pratkanis et al., 1988; see also Frey & Rogers, 2014).
Even if researchers can detect reliable, temporally-robust changes, this still raises
important questions regarding the actual potential for opinion to translate to behavior itself.
Motivational psychology (Webb & Sheeran, 2006; Sheeran & Webb, 2016 for reviews),
economics (e.g., Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), or other applied studies looking to modify how
individuals behave (e.g., Pelowski et al., 2015), often note that there is a disconnect in follow-up
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behavior especially after an individual has left an intervention or testing space.
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This could also
be related, once again, to the nature and phrasing of assessments. In surveys, participants are
typically asked to report on general statements regarding how they typically see themselves (I
usually try to help others), or regarding hypothetical acts (we should allow more refugees into our
country). However, it is unclear if these statements translate to how individuals actually behave
in specific situations, and may be particularly susceptible to outside influence (Areni, 2008;
Barrett et al., 1998; Stone et al., 2012).
Thus, in sum, the field of art interventions research is essentially left at the same point of
ambiguity as that of the artist whose quote began this paper—unclear of whether, when, or how
long and in what way our ideas, feelings, and behaviors might be impacted by art.
Present Study
In this paper, we offer evidence looking into the dual questions of whether (1) art
interventions might have a detectible impact on attitudes and behaviors regarding contemporary
societal topics and (2) how such interventions might best be framed and assessed. We do this by
employing two separate studies, although with the same underlying stimulus: Study 1 involved an
assessment of an art exhibition’s potential impact on selected attitudes of viewers—tackling
3
Even in present art-intervention research, there is some evidence of report-versus-behavior
disconnects. In the study on an art installation (“Pollution Pods”) referenced above, targeting
awareness of pollution in urban spaces, Sommer et al. (2019) report a small change in
“environmental awareness”. The authors also offered, as a means of tracking resulting behavior, a
free license to a commercial app to track participant’s carbon footprints and to receive pro-
environmental alternatives to polluting activities. This resulted in an opt-in rate of 2%. Keller et
al. (2020), in addition to assessing attitudes, offered participants either a chance to win a raffle for
20-50€ or to donate their chance to an environmental organization, with only 48% actually
opting-in to the loss of potential money. See also, for example, a meta-analysis of financial
education programs, which suggests that these explain only about 0.1% of variance in financial
behaviors (Fernandes et al., 2014).
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topics of empathy, prosocial attitudes, and xenophobia/concern for refugees—and using a pre-
and post-intervention design, administered just before and after the exhibition visit, with attitude
and behavior question-batteries focusing on self-reports regarding how individuals thought they
usually feel or behave. Study 2 expanded on the first study, employing both a pre-/post-design
with a wider separation between assessment points. We also employed daily diaries, in which
participants were tracked over a period of two weeks, with the museum visit scheduled at the
mid-point, and with the goal of continuously assessing participants over this full time period.
Daily life methods represent an alternative approach to traditional surveys. This allows for
more longitudinal and ecologically valid assessments, tracking opinions, experiences, and
behaviors of individuals throughout their everyday lives (Silvia & Cotter, 2021). Daily life
methods have also been argued to be a particularly useful means of tracking the effect of
interventions, including engagement with the arts (e.g., see Greasley & Lamont, 2011; Holt,
2018, 2020; Sloboda et al., 2001; Tymoszuk, Perkins, Fancourt et al., 2019; Tymoszuk, Perkins,
Spiro et al., 2020). By embedding our museum visit in the everyday lives of participants, this
allowed us to assess for the possible duration and timing of effects, as well as to account for
possible day-to-day fluctuations. This also allowed us to contrast question constructions asking
participants to report on what they had actually done or thought that day against the same root
questions as in the Study 1-2 surveys, which employed more theoretical or hypothetical framing,
with both question constructions matched within the same Study 2 participants.
This study also presents important new daily life evidence, which has currently not often
explored downstream impacts from one intervention and certainly not a single gallery/museum
visit. Researchers also calls for linking and comparison of daily life data to other (i.e., pre-post
survey) findings, within participants (Dolan et al. 2012, 2017; Holt et al., 2020). Thus, we
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provide both, important new evidence on the duration and nature of potential impacts from
visiting art, and a template and exploratory base for future assessments of such impacts.
Method, Study 1: Onsite Pre-/Post-Survey
Participants
Study 1 involved a final sample of 41 participants (58.5%, 24 females, Mage = 32.02, SD =
12.44, range = 18-65 years). These individuals constituted a convenience sample of people
stopped and recruited from among the pedestrian foot traffic flow in the immediate area of the
museum (located in the city center) and who subsequently agreed to participate. All participants
were comfortable speaking English and were compensated for their participation with a free
ticket to see the exhibition (8 Euros) and a tote bag, both supplied by the museum. The final
sample was reduced from an initial sample of 53, with individuals removed because they did not
complete all portions. Both Studies 1 and 2 followed the protocols of the University of [masked
for peer review] ethics Committee. Signed informed consent was completed before participation.
Stimuli
The study centered on the exhibition “Show Me Your Wound” (Zeig mir deine Wunde),
held at the Dom Museum in Vienna (J. Schwanberg and K. Speidel, curators; Figure 1). The
exhibition addressed the topic of the vulnerability of the body, and the personal, psychological,
and sociopolitical implications. As put by the curators, “as everybody sustains injuries or feels
threatened by the prospect of harm in the course of her or his own life,” the show sought to
“encourage visitors to reflect on a crucial issue of humankind” (Schwanberg, 2019, pp. 36, 40).
In “recent years” they further suggested, “tides of refugees and terrorist attacks in the public
realm have increasingly pushed this dimension to the fore” (p. 32). “Through the exposure of
[such] vulnerability” they hoped, the exhibition might “bring about positive change” (pp. 37-38).
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The show consisted of three rooms divided into four main spaces (see Figure 1, E)
containing 40+ artworks in a range of media from painting, sculpture, photography, installation,
video, textiles, etcetera. The spaces were expected to be roughly seen in order, with Rooms 1-2
holding a number of artworks (Figure 1, C) displaying examples of physical/mental wounding
with the aim of articulating the fragility of the body and the message that “visible injuries are
always also linked up with invisible wounds and that, vice versa, emotional wounds may result in
injuries of the body that cannot be overlooked” (Schwanberg, 2019, p. 43). This was followed by
the first half of Room 3, containing artworks addressing the themes “The politics of
wounding”/“Instruments of wounding” and constituting a main message of the show suggesting
“that wounds are frequently caused by struggles for power and violent conflicts originating in
political, religious, or gender-based oppression” (p. 43). As centerpieces of this space (see Figure
1, B for artwork/artist information) were contemporary pieces such as a bomb disposal suit from
the wars in Afghanistan, detonated by the artist from the inside, photographs of landmines, and a
video piece in which a young, deaf boy recounted, via gestures, the occupation of his village,
showing “his own injuries as well as that of the society he had to leave behind” (p. 140). The last
section of Room 3 showed other examples of wounding—to animals, statues, buildings—to
further suggest the fragility of the environment, as well as more hopeful works regarding the
beauty or healing that might be found in wounds from the past.
Importantly, although clearly a key aspect of the artwork selections and themes, the above
ties to prosocialness, refugees, empathy, etcetera, were not explicitly articulated in wall texts or
other exhibition materials. No participant had read the above-cited curators’ text.
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Figure 1. Overview of Exhibition “Show me your wound” (Zeig mir deine Wunde), Dom
Museum Vienna. (A-top, exhibition poster/catalogue cover (artwork; Anders Krisár, Arm
(right), 2006). A, exhibition poster, museum entrance and street-level participant recruiting
location. B, artworks from ‘The politics of wounding’ and ‘Instruments of wounding’ portions of
exhibition (left-top, unknown artist, crucifixion scene from the Episcopal Palace, early 19th c.,
showing stabbing damage from Nazi occupation; left-bottom, Anders Krisár, Bomb Suit, 2006/7;
right-top, Raphaël Dallaporta, Antipersonnel, 2004; right-bottom, Erkan Özgen, Wonderland,
2016, still from 4 min. video of boy recounting the violent occupation of his village during the
Syrian civil war). C, exhibition floorplan. D, artworks from ‘Wounds of the body, wounds of the
soul’ portions of exhibition (left, Günter Brus, Der helle Wahnsinn, 1968; Andres Serrano,
Suicide by rat poison II, 1992). E, artworks from ‘Attending to the wound’ and ‘Celebrating the
wound’ portions of exhibition (left-frontmost, Gerhard Rühm, Wunde/r, 2004; right, Lucio
Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1959). (All photos from the paper authors).
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Procedure
We used a matched pre-/post-viewing method (see e.g., Pelowski, 2015 for similar
approaches). Participants were first stopped on the street outside the museum by a researcher
(Figure 1, A) and asked to participate. If they agreed, they were then led into the lobby of the
museum and to a small lounge area. They were given an explanation of the basic study aim (see
footnote).
4
Notably, this only informed participants that they would be asked to look at some art
and to record their experience and reactions. No mention was given of potential impact on
attitudes or behaviors, nor of the art/exhibition type.
They then filled out a pre-survey, including batteries assessing target attitude factors and
mood. All surveys were administered via the online commercial survey tool Qualtrics (Qualtrics
Int., Seattle WA, USA), which could be accessed on either participants’ own smart phone, via
QR code, or via tablet computers provided by our research team. Upon completion of the pre-test,
which took about 15 minutes, they were asked to visit the exhibition, located on the second floor
of the museum, and accessed via a staircase directly adjacent to the lounge area. Upon
completion, they were asked to immediately return to the testing area to fill out a post-survey
(with matched mood/attitude questions as well as experience-specific factors, taking roughly 20
minutes). Participants were instructed that they could view the art for as long as and in whatever
manner they wished. They were explicitly told not to visit other parts of the museum before
returning and filling out the post-survey. After completion they were free to see the rest of the
space. Participants were not observed while inside the gallery.
4
The introductory description was as follows: “In this study we aim to understand how people
understand and judge artworks in a real-life context. With your participation you are contributing
to our knowledge of psychological processes and phenomena. It is a strictly behavioral study.
You will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire, then visit the "Show me your wound"
exhibition and finally fill out a short questionnaire about your experience afterwards.”
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Pre-survey
Pro-Social Attitudes, Abilities, Behaviors
The Pre-survey included standardized batteries or procedures meant to assess a range of
attitudes, self-assessed abilities, or behaviors which we hypothesized might be impacted by the
exhibition.
Cognitive and Affective Empathy: First, we assessed individuals’ self-assessed ability or
propensity to think or behave in certain ways involving a number of empathic factors. This used
the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE, Reniers et al., 2011), a 31-item
questionnaire (‘How much do the following statements apply to you?’ 1 = strongly disagree, 7 =
strongly agree) regarding both cognitive (knowing what others feel) and affective (feeling what
others feel) empathy. Beyond these two main aspects, it can further be divided into five
subfactors of “emotion contagion,” “perspective taking,” “online simulation,” overtly attempting
to put oneself in another person’s position by imagining what that person is feeling, “proximal
responsivity,” responding to the mood of others; and “peripheral responsivity,” tendency to
personally feel emotions as communicated in media including visual art.
Empathic Concern: Participants also answered six statements from the Empathic Concern
subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983). This also asked for agreement to
statements (e.g., “Other people's misfortunes do not usually disturb me…,” 1 = does not describe
me well, 5 = describes me very well) relating to self-assessed concern for others.
Xenophobia, Prosocialness: Participants completed a five-item battery (Van der Veer, et
al., 2011) argued to be a cross-culturally applicable measurement of attitudes regarding
immigration or acceptance of refugees (i.e., “Immigration in this country is out of control”). We
assessed more general pro-social behaviors via the Prosocialness Scale for Adults (Caprara
2005), which similarly asked for agreement to 16 statements relating to having a generally
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helpful attitude or set of behaviors (“I try to help others”) as well as empathic aspects of
understanding and sharing others’ situations.
All of the above measures, through their wording, assessed individuals’ responses to
general or hypothetical statements about themselves regarding how they saw themselves thinking
or acting (i.e., ‘how do you generally or usually act/feel’?).
Social Value Orientation/Action: Finally, we included the Social Value Orientation
(SVO) task (Murphy et al., 2011), which asks individuals to hypothetically divide up money
between themselves and a “randomly paired,” previously unknown “other” person by presenting
scenarios with nine matched values that the participant and the other “would receive,” with
differing balances. Thus, this is argued to provide a more action-based assessment measuring of
narrow self-interest or the propensity to maximize one’s own material gain at the expense of
others.
Mood, Life Satisfaction
Participants then completed a battery of questions assessing their current mood. These
were answered via 7-point scale (‘how do you feel right now?’ 1 = not at all, 7 = very much) and
included a selection of terms previously used in daily diary studies (Conner & Silvia, 2015) and
which provided a range of combinations of valance and arousal (enthusiastic, cheerful, content,
relaxed, irritable, anxious, tired, gloomy, stressed). We also included four social emotions (guilt,
jealous, shame, and confident), expected to potentially be especially susceptible to experimental
context and to temporary attitude change (see e.g., Rees et al., 2015; Sommer et al., 2019; Swim
& Bloodhart, 2015; but see O'Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009). We also included three questions
for basic ‘positive mood,’ ‘negative mood,’ and ‘emotionally aroused’ following a circumplex
model (Russell, 1980).
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Additionally, we employed a selection of main topics from the Neutral Objects
Satisfaction Questionnaire (NOSQ; Judge & Hulin, 1993). This presents individuals with a list of
concepts (e.g., ‘the city in which you live,’ ‘the people you know’) and asks for general
satisfaction with these (‘What is your overall satisfaction with ______?’, 1 = dissatisfied, 3 =
satisfied). This approach is argued to provide a counterpoint to other measures of mood,
providing especially a more temporally stable—thus, potentially unchanging (Judge & Bretz,
1993)—measure of affective disposition to one’s life and environment (Carter, 2004).
Matched Post-viewing Survey, Exhibition Appraisal
The post-viewing survey, completed immediately after their visit to the exhibition and
return to the testing location, included a matched set of mood questions and the same
prosocial/empathy batteries.
Artworks/Exhibition Evaluation
Participants were also asked to evaluate the exhibition and its art on seven bipolar scales
(“Overall the exhibition was_____.”, e.g., 1 = ‘bad’, 7 = ‘good’). Scales were selected to cover
main evaluative/hedonic ratings of art quality and enjoyment (bad-good, ugly-beautiful,
meaningless-meaningful, boring-interesting) as well as terms typically connected to potency and
activity (potent-impotent, active-passive, strong-weak). In addition, participants were asked
questions regarding their general understanding or felt impact from the exhibition: ‘Did the
exhibition cause you to reflect on or rethink anything about yourself, your expectations, or the
world?’, ‘Do you think the curator wanted to communicate something to the viewer?’ ‘Would you
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pay to see the exhibition again?’ as well as ‘Was there a sense of unity between the artworks?’ to
assess the basic coherence of the selected artworks (all scales 1 = not at all; 7 = very much).
5
Other Background/Control Questions
Participants also answered several questions about themselves that could potentially
impact their engagement: (1) their general political orientation (1 = Left wing; 7 = Right wing);
(2) how important religion was to them (1 = not at all; 7 = very much) and their specific religion
(free answer), included due to the religious themes of some of the art (see Dunham et al., 2014);
(3) general art interest and (4) objective art knowledge, via the Vienna Art Interest and Art
Knowledge questionnaire (Specker et al., 2018), as well as (5) whether participants had
previously studied or were currently studying art/art history; (6) frequency of visits to
museums/galleries (following Chatterjee et al., 2012); (7) basic demographic information; and (8)
whether individuals had read the wall texts (‘Yes/No’).
Results—Study 1
The descriptive statistics of the participants (provided in Table S1 of Supplementary
Materials) suggested a generally moderate-leftish political orientation (M = 2.98 where 1 = left;
SD = 1.44). Just under half (41.5%, n = 17) considered themselves to be religious, all of whom
were of Christian faiths. Most participants were ‘lay’ viewers of art, with a mean on the art
5
For the purpose of full disclosure regarding methods and assessments, note that the post-survey
also included questions targeting aspects of the experience intended for another study, which will
not be discussed further in the present paper. These included asking participants about specific
emotions that they thought that the artists/curator had intended, using a list of 38 items. Viewers
were also asked to answer the questions ‘Did you have a sense of the curators’/artists’ presence?’,
‘Did you think about the way that the artists/curators must have felt when making/selecting the
art?’, and ‘Did you have a sense of what the curator was thinking when making the exhibition?’
(7-point scale). The post-survey also included questions assessing awareness of the museum
shop, which the museum staff were interested in.
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interest scale of 47.6 of the 77 possible points (SD = 14.0, Range = 14-54), and scored low—5.0
out of 26 (SD = 4.4, Range = 0-17)—on the art knowledge scale.
General Exhibition Appraisals and Art Experience
The exhibition appraisals (shown as boxplots with groupwise means in Figure 2)
suggested that, in general, participants rated the exhibition as rather ‘interesting’ and
‘meaningful’. Whereas, for ‘good/bad,’ although the average rating was positive, there was a
more even distribution across both positive and negative ratings. Participants also tended to rate
the art as quite ‘potent,’ ‘strong,’ and ‘active’. Answers to the question of whether the exhibition
had caused individuals to rethink anything about themselves showed an even distribution across
agreement/disagreement. Most participants agreed that there was a general unity between the
artworks; 82.9% indicated that they had read the wall texts/labels.
Figure 2. Study 1 and Study 2: Ratings of Exhibition/Artworks, understanding of curator
intention, and feeling that exhibition had caused individuals to rethink something about
themselves or worldview (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna). (Results from
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Study based on assessment of N = 41 participants; Study 2 based on a different cohort of N = 41
participants).
Mood, Attitudes, and Behaviors Pre- and Post-art Exhibition
To assess the main dependent variables (DVs), we first calculated composite scores for all
scales or sub-scales following the original paper methodologies. To provide more comparable
answers across batteries, we used averages rather than sum scores for all results. For SVO
scoring, three participants appeared to have not fully understood the questions, and thus were
dropped from analyses. No other scales had missing data.
The results, both recorded pre- and post-exhibition, are shown as box plots/averages in
Figure 3 for mood/life satisfaction and Figure 4 for the attitude factors. Correlations between the
baseline scores, religiousness, political orientation, art interest/knowledge scores, and all
correlations between the change scores for the various DVs, are provided in Tables S2-S4 of
Supplementary Materials. Due to the rather smallish sample, large number of correlations, and
lack of clear hypotheses, these are only provided for descriptive purposes.
To assess for differences, pre- and post-visit, we conducted a series of repeat measures t-
tests, independently for each DV. These are shown in Tables A1 and A2 of the Appendix.
Change in Mood/Neutral Object Satisfaction
Beginning with mood/emotion (shown in Figure 3), participants tended to enter the
exhibition space in rather positive moods. Paired t tests (see Table A1) suggested that, post
viewing, participants reported higher negative mood/emotion. This reached significance for
‘gloomy’ and for the social emotions of ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’. Whereas, for positive emotions, a
significant result was found only for ‘cheerful,’ which decreased. Following a Bonferroni
correction (see note in Figure 3/Table A1), “gloomy,” “guilt,” and general positive/negative
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emotion responses retained significance. The general level of emotion arousal (regardless of
valence) and Neutral Object Satisfaction did not show a change.
Figure 3. Study 1: Mood and Neutral Object Satisfaction, Pre- and Post-visit to Art
Exhibition (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna). (Results based on repeat
measures t-test, N = 41 participants, with time as within-participant factor (immediately pre-
exhibition visit, immediately post-visit), based on answers to questions “how do you feel right
now?” (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). * denotes significant difference (p < .05), corrected for
multiple comparisons (familywise Bonferroni, adjusted alpha = .00312; .05/ 16 mood items,
excluding Neutral Object Satisfaction). ☨ = significant at p < .05, uncorrected). Neutral Object
Satisfaction is included in the Bonferroni correction for all other DVs in Figure 4.
Change in Empathic/Prosocial Attitudes and Behaviors
Moving to the attitude measures (Figure 4), in pre-viewing baselines, most participants
fell on the positive side for all scales, with the exception of xenophobia, where participants
showed general disagreement (lower xenophobia). The correlations between the baseline attitude
scores (Table S2, Supplementary Materials) suggested relatively low relations between the
separate batteries, with the exception of between QCAE sub-factors (essentially duplicating past
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findings, Reniers et al., 2011). Art interest, knowledge, and importance of religion showed no
significant correlations to any attitudes.
Post-exhibition, most factors tended to show decreases—suggesting lower self-assessed
empathy, empathic concern, and prosocial agreement; but also lower xenophobia. Social value
orientation showed a general increase. Repeated measures t-tests for each factor (Table A2)
revealed only significance for Xenophobia as well as the QCAE Cognitive Empathy sub-scales
“Online simulation” and “Peripheral responsivity”. However, only the latter survived a
Bonferroni correction (see footnotes Figure 4/Table A2). Correlations between the change scores
(post-viewing minus pre-viewing; Table S3) suggested low relations between the factors.
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Figure 4. Study 1: Agreement with general Empathic, Prosocial, and Xenophobic Attitudes
and Behaviors (i.e., ‘How do you generally or usually act/feel?’), Pre- and Post-visit to Art
Exhibition (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
(Results based on repeat measures t-test, N = 41 participants, with time as within-participant
factor (immediately pre-exhibition visit, immediately post-visit). * denotes significant
differences, corrected for multiple comparisons (familywise Bonferroni, adjusted alpha
= .00417, .05/12, including Neutral Object Satisfaction, Figure 3). ☨ = significant at p < .05,
uncorrected.
Correlation of Attitude Change with Baseline Attitudes, Mood, Ratings, Reading Labels
For exploratory purposes, correlations between changes in attitudes and the various
baseline interpersonal and art-experience-related factors as well as art ratings or experience are
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provided in Table S4. Again, these showed generally low relations. Higher baseline scores
showed moderate correlations with greater reductions in the same batteries, post-engagement, for
QCAE factors and empathic concern, although this was not found for the other factors. No
relations were found for changes in attitudes and political orientation, art knowledge, or religious
importance. Higher art interest correlated with only increased SVO scores towards the
prosocial/altruism direction.
Regarding correlation between changes in mood and the attitude DVs, we found only a
significant relation between increased positive mood and decrease in QCAE sub-item peripheral
responsivity and with an increase in proximal responsivity. Contrary to some past findings (e.g.,
Sommer et al., 2019) no relations with negative mood, or social emotions were detected. Rating
the art as more ‘good’ correlated to increased cognitive empathy and the sub-factor ‘perspective
taking’. Similar patterns, with especially cognitive empathy aspects, were found for rating the art
as more ‘meaningful’ and ‘potent.’ No results survived correction for pairwise comparisons.
A one-way ANOVA considering the relation between reading labels (yes/no) and change
scores for the dependent variables (Table S5, Supplementary Materials) detected only one notable
result—larger decreases in cognitive empathy for those who had not read the labels.
Discussion—Study 1
Study 1 did detect some impacts following the art engagement. This involved agreement
to statements suggesting lower xenophobia and modifications in individuals’ self-assessed
feelings in two empathy domains, matching the exhibition themes. Participants also left the
exhibition with reduced positive and increased negative emotion, as well as increased gloominess
and the social emotions of guilt and shame. These impacts were found in tandem with a general
lack of correlation between specific changes and other factors—such as baseline attitudes brought
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into the encounter, reading of the labels, art knowledge or training—suggesting a rather general
effect across our sample. Thus, Study 1 itself adds important data to this emerging research
theme.
Study 1’s findings also raised issues regarding the second main topic of this paper. Some
of the detected changes could at least partially have been driven by the study design. We found
only a change in batteries regarding general attitudes—once again themselves based on
agreement to rather hypothetical statements about how one usually acts or how life or conditions
should be. One might argue that these aspects are the most susceptible to influence from the
social experimental setting. Whereas, more-behavior related measures, such as Social Value
Orientation (SVO), related to dividing up money (although still framed hypothetically), did not
show change in our participants. The changes in mood—especially higher social emotions
guilt/shame—also support some amount of influence from the setting. (Although, a significant
relation between changed mood/guilt and attitudes was generally not detected for all DVs).
That said, looking across the DVs, one could also argue that there was less impact from
the paradigm as might have been expected. Beyond mood, which did show somewhat robust
effect sizes, only one result (the QCAE empathy factor Peripheral responsivity) survived a
Bonferroni correction for multiple pairwise comparisons. These results—in tandem with the
batteries (e.g., NSO) which were not expected to, and indeed did not, show a change, as well as
general lack of high correlations between changes in DVs—might be read as not supporting
contextual effects of the settings. This raises questions regarding the actual efficacy of the
intervention and/or about our means of self-report-based detection. Similarly, the direction of
some of the effects—suggesting reductions in some self-assessed empathy or prosocialness—are
also intriguing, as is the effect longevity. These questions were further assessed in Study 2.
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Study 2: Method, Daily Diary
Participants
Study 2 involved a final sample of 41 psychology students from the University of
[redacted] (M = 21.85, SD = 3.36, range = 19-35; 68.3%, 28 female). These individuals were
selected, instead of a convenience sample, in order to allow for the more intensive, longitudinal
sampling technique and access to participants’ mobile phones. Participants received course credit
in addition to free admission to the exhibition. The final sample was reduced from an initial
sample of 50 individuals, with nine removed for not completing the study (see Results below).
Procedure
The study used a mixed design, collecting individuals’ thoughts and feelings over the
week before and after their museum visit (via daily diary) as well as employing the same test-
retest scales as used in the Study 1. On the first day, participants were asked to come to the lab,
where they were given an informed consent form and had the daily diary software (the
MetricWire app platform, Metricwire Inc.) installed on their personal mobile phones. Participants
also received instructions about the nature of the daily surveys (Supplementary Materials, Table
S6). Subsequently, participants completed the same baseline survey (via Qualtrics) as in Study 1.
Starting the evening of the lab session, and for consecutive days throughout the study,
participants then completed the daily life surveys. These became available beginning at 7 p.m.
each day with a reminder one hour later and with the survey expiring at midnight. After one week
of daily surveys, participants were instructed to visit the exhibition at the Dom Museum. They
were given a one-week period during which they could visit, at their convenience, but were asked
to continue answering daily diaries each day until they visited.
Upon arriving at the museum, participants were told to show the staff at the front desk the
app on their phone and were admitted, for free, to the exhibition. The only instructions regarding
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the visit itself was to go directly to the target exhibition and to indicate in the app when
physically entering and when leaving the exhibition space. When finished, participants were
immediately asked to complete a post-viewing survey (again via Qualtrics, accessed via a
provided link). The daily diary surveys then continued that evening and for one week after, at
which point participants were asked to complete a final exit survey. Participants’ diary entries
were monitored via the phone app, with prompts via email if they missed a day.
Materials
Full Survey—On week before, Immediately after, One-week after viewing
The full survey followed that of Study 1 and was employed at the three time points above:
(1) first day of initial lab session, (2) immediately following exhibition visit, (3) at the
completion of the daily diary assessment period 20 days after the initial lab session. It included
the same batteries with the exception of mood, which was assessed as part of the daily diary
below using the full range of questions as in Study 1. The initial survey also assessed personality,
art interest/knowledge, political orientation, religious importance questions as in Study 1.
6
Daily Diary
The daily diary contained a shortened version of the questions/batteries from Study 1 (see
Table S7 for full list and wording). Importantly, all questions were modified so that individuals
were asked to reflect on what they had actually felt or done that day as opposed to the more
hypothetical original formulations. People were first asked to what extent they had felt the same
6
The Study 2 baseline survey also asked participants to complete batteries involving personality
aspects intended for a different project and not discussed further in the present paper. These
included: Big 5 personality, Need for Affect, Need for Closure Scale, Need for Cognition, private
self-consciousness, Social Dominance Orientation.
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13 positive and negative mood/emotion words used in Study 1. We also included an additional
item to assess general level of stress (“today, I felt stressed”).
This was followed by eight questions from the empathy/prosocialness/xenophobia
batteries, including four questions adapted from the QCAE (Reniers et al., 2011)—“Today, I…
tried to consider other people’s feelings before I did something” and “…tried to understand my
friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” (both linked to Cognitive
empathy aspects of Online Simulation but also clearly related to perspective taking); “Today,
people I was with had a strong influence on my mood” (Affective empathy, Emotion contagion);
“…I got deeply involved with feelings of a character in a film, play, or novel” (Peripheral
responsivity). In addition, we included two Empathic Concern items (Davis, 1983)—“… I had
tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”; “…I felt touched by things I saw
happen”—and two items adapted from the Prosocialness Scale (Caprara, 2005)—“…I tried to
help others”; “…I intensely felt what others felt”. As these latter four questions overlapped
greatly with the items used in the above xenophobia scale, we therefore did not include other
questions from this battery. All questions employed the same number of points and anchor
wording as used in the original scales.
We also included a set of new items to target life satisfaction or general happiness with
aspects of individuals’ everyday lives. This included overall life satisfaction using a one-item 11-
point Likert scale (Diener, 1984; “How satisfied are you with your life today?”), as well as six
questions from the Quality of Life Scale (Flanagan, 1971), which assessed satisfaction in material
well-being, relations with family, relations with significant others, helping or encouraging others,
personal understanding, and socializing. These were employed, instead of Neutral Object
Satisfaction (again, shown to be stable in Study 1), because the questions addressed aspects
expected to be particularly relevant in the diary paradigm.
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We included three items from the Private Self-Consciousness subset of the revised Self-
Consciousness Scale (Carver & Carver, 1985) (“Today, I thought about myself a lot,” “…I did
not take a hard look at myself,” “…I paid attention to my inner feelings”) expected to detect
potential introspection or rumination as a result of, say, the art experience.
Finally, participants were asked (yes/no) whether they had gone to any museums or
galleries, attended any musical or theater performances, or sought out some new art, music, or
aesthetic experience and, if so, to briefly describe this/these.
Results—Study 2
We first omitted participants (nine) who had either not visited the museum in their target
time frame or who had completed fewer than five (20%) diaries in the days preceding or after the
museum visit (following Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013), leaving the final sample of 41. Three
individuals did not complete the final post-viewing Day-20 survey. However, as they did
complete a sufficient number of daily diaries, they were retained for analyses. Due to an issue
with the Day-1 full survey randomization, some participants were not shown all batteries in this
assessment. This also did not affect the Daily Diary data. Differences in sample size are reflected
in the statistical information.
Descriptive statistics (Table S1, Supplementary Materials, including between-studies
statistical comparisons) showed no differences in political orientation or art interest distribution
between studies. The Study 2 cohort had higher art knowledge scores. However, only 9.76% (n =
4) had ever studied any art-related courses. Only three individuals had gone to any other art
exhibitions over the entire sampling period. Each of these individuals had only gone once.
Assessments of the exhibition (Figure 2, grey boxes; see also Table S8, Supplementary Materials
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for between-study statistical comparisons) was also similar. A similarly large majority (89%) had
again read the wall texts.
Full Survey—Baseline, Post-visit, Following Week Attitudes
The full survey results for attitudes and behaviors are shown in Figure 5 (see Table S1,
Supplementary Materials for t-test comparisons between Study 1 and 2). In general, the baselines
for the Study 2 sample were similar to Study 1. Participants generally showed the same direction
of changes in attitudes, pre- and post-viewing. This was especially true for the (again decreasing)
prosocial and empathic concern factors. In the assessment made one week after the visit, we
found very small changes and some tendency of returns to pre-visit means.
Repeat measures ANOVAs with time (Day-1, post-visit, Day-20) as predictor (see Table
A3) revealed only one significant result—in this case for decreased prosocialness—with pairwise
comparisons showing a significant decrease between the pre-viewing and both post-viewing
points, but no difference between the immediate post-visit and 20 days later. This difference,
however, did not survive a Bonferroni correction (Table A3/Figure 5 notes). Correlations with
the change scores (Tables S9- S10, Supplementary Materials) were also similar to Study 1. No
relations were found between attitude changes and art knowledge or religion importance. Reading
labels, once again, showed no significant relations to any changes.
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Figure 5. Study 2: Agreement with general Empathic, Prosocial, and Xenophobic Attitudes
and Behaviors (i.e., ‘How do you generally or usually act/feel?’), assessed at three time-
points one-week prior to, immediately post-, and one week-post visit to Art Exhibition
(“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna). (Results based on repeat measures
ANOVA, N = 41 participants, with time as within-participant factor (Day 1, immediately post-
exhibition visit, Day 20 post-visit) with follow-up posthoc pairwise comparisons for all times and
factors. * denotes significance, corrected for multiple comparisons (adjusted alpha for main
ANOVA = .00417, p = .05/12 items; adjusted alpha for all pairwise comparisons = .00139 for 36
comparisons). ☨ = significant at p < .05, uncorrected.
Daily Diary
Participants completed, on average, 6.34 daily surveys in the week prior to and 5.85
surveys in the week following their museum visit. The gallery visit occurred, on average, on the
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11th day of the study. To standardize the data, we restricted our focus to responses made during
the seven-day period preceding the day of the visit, as well as day of the visit, and the seven days
following the exhibition visit, regardless of the actual visit day (i.e., centering the temporal factor
at the day of the museum visit itself). This range was then used in all of the forthcoming analyses.
Figure 6 provides an example of the results of the diary reports, regarding the attitude
questions. Figure 7 provides a similar example for select mood factors. In both figures, the light
blue circles correspond to the responses made each evening in the 7-day pre-visit and 7-day post-
visit periods, as well as showing the response made the evening of the exhibition visit (darker
blue circle and dotted line). Estimated averages for the pre-/post-visit periods (see explanation in
next sections below) are shown as a light-blue (7-day pre-visit) and light grey (7-day post-visit)
boxes, respectively. For comparison, the figures also display, where possible, the mean answers
to the same questions as provided on the full day-1, immediate post-visit, and day-20 surveys,
again with the major difference being that where the daily diary had asked for actual thoughts and
behavior that day, the full surveys had used elicited more hypothetical or general thoughts or
actions (i.e., “I usually…”). (We again did not collect either life satisfaction or mood data using
this paradigm, thus its lack of inclusion in the Figures).
First, as can be seen in especially Figure 6, in general, responses to the daily diary
questions tended to be notably lower (i.e., on the negative/disagree side of most scales) than their
full-survey/hypothetical counterparts. That is, where individuals tended to agree that they were
relatively prosocial or empathetic, in general, when they were asked if they had actually acted in
these ways that day, participants were less in agreement.
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Figure 6. Study 2: Averaged results for daily reports on empathic, prosocial, self-reflective,
and life satisfaction thoughts and actions made that day (i.e., ‘today I…’), provided for the
week pre and post Art Exhibition visit, and corresponding report to full hypothetical survey
question (‘I usually…’) (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna). (Results based on
assessment of N = 41 participants. * with vertical arrow (!) indicates significant quadratic trend
in comparison of 7-day estimated average prior to the museum visit (level 1/within-person level,
nested within participants) to the reports made on the day of the visit, and on the day after the
visit. Horizontal arrow indicates Linear trend. 7-Day Estimated Averages based on multilevel
model in Mplus 8 using Maximum Likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard errors. See
Table 1 for all statistical results. “Take a hard look at self” reverse scored from original item
wording.
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Figure 7. Study 2: Averaged results for daily reports on select felt mood/emotion that day
(i.e., ‘today I felt…’), provided for the week pre and post Art Exhibition visit (“Show Me
Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna). (Results based on assessment of N = 41 participants. *
with vertical arrow (!) indicates significant quadratic trend in comparison of 7-days prior to the
museum visit (level 1/within-person level, nested within participants), to the reports made on the
day of the visit, and on the day after the visit. 7-Day Estimated Averages based on multilevel
model in Mplus 8 using Maximum Likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard errors. See
Table 2 for all statistical results.
Intraclass correlations—Day-to-Day Fluctuations
To assess the degree of day-to-day fluctuation in the factors, we assessed the intraclass
correlations (see Figure 8). In general, mood/emotions varied primarily within-persons (ICCS
< .40), as did all empathy and prosocialness questions (ICCs < .46), overall life satisfaction,
satisfaction with significant other relations, ability to help others, understanding oneself,
socializing (ICCs < .47), and the self-reflective questions or attention to inner thoughts and
feelings (< .40). These results suggested more day-to-day fluctuations across the sampling period
(see Koo & Li, 2016). On the other hand, satisfaction with financial and material well-being and
satisfaction with relations with family varied primarily between people (ICCs > .73) or, thus, did
not show notable day-to-day changes.
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Figure 8. Study 2: Intraclass Correlations for individual Daily Diary Factors. (Generally,
ICCs less than .50 indicate poor reliability/high within-participant variance, and thus suggest
higher day-to-day fluctuations. ICCs >.50 suggest moderate reliability or more stable trends
within participants; >.75 suggests high reliability (Koo & Li, 2016).
Changes in Daily Attitudes Prior to and Post Art Exhibition Visit
To assess potential changes in the daily reports, we used multilevel models in Mplus 8,
using maximum likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard errors, and employed two sets
of analyses. To examine whether there were short-term changes post-visit, we compared
estimated ratings made on the 7-days prior to the museum visit (level 1/within-person level,
nested within participants) to reports made on the day of the visit, and on the day after the visit.
To examine whether any changes persisted over a longer period, we compared estimated ratings
made in the 7-days prior to the museum visit, the day of the visit, and the 7-days following the
visit. For both sets of analyses, we further examined both linear trends (i.e., suggesting a
continuous modulation across the time periods) and quadratic trends (suggesting more temporary,
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i.e., up-down/down-up changes). Results and effect sizes are shown in Table 1 for the attitudes
and Table 2 for mood.
Table 1.
Study 2, Daily Diary: MLMs predicting changes in empathy and life satisfaction attitudes
(standardized effects) for specific thoughts/actions that day (“today, I…”) in the Week
Prior to, the Day of, the Day After, and the Week After an Exhibition Visit (“Show Me
Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Pre-Week,
Day of Visit, Day After Visit
Pre-Week,
Day of Visit, Post-Week
Linear
Quadratic
Linear
Quadratic
Empathy, Concern, Prosocial Attitudes
Consider Feelings (QCAE, Cognitive empathy)
-.02 (.05)a
-.07 (.04)
-.06 (.05)
-.10* (.05)
Perspective (QCAE, Cognitive empathy)
-.01 (.05)
-.03 (.04)
-.06 (.06)
-.06 (.06)
Mood Infl. (QCAE, Affective empathy)
.10* (.05)
.03 (.04)
.03 (.06)
.01 (.06)
Character (QCAE, Affective empathy)
.01 (.06)
-.03 (.04)
-.04 (.06)
-.06 (.05)
Concern (Empathic concern)
.04 (.06)
-.19* (.05)
.05 (.05)
-.21* (.06)
Touched (Empathic concern)
.02 (.05)
-.29* (.05)
.08 (.05)
-.30* (.05)
Help Others (Prosocialness)
.04 (.05)
-.08* (.04)
-.02 (.06)
-.12* (.05)
Others Felt (Prosocialness)
-.00 (.05)
-.17* (.04)
-.01 (.06)
-.20* (.05)
Satisfaction
Life Sat.
.08 (.05)
-.07* (.03)
.06 (.07)
-.08 (.04)
Finance Sat.
.01 (.08)
-.03 (.03)
.07 (.07)
-.01 (.04)
Relation with family Sat.
.01 (.04)
-.07* (.03)
.02 (.06)
-.09* (.04)
Relations with Sig. Other Sat.
-.02 (.07)
-.11* (.03)
-.03 (.06)
-.15* (.05)
Helping others Sat.
.09 (.04)
-.01 (.04)
-.05 (.05)
-.06 (.05)
Personal understand. Sat.
.08 (.05)
-.03 (.04)
-.02 (.06)
-.08 (.06)
Socializing Sat.
.10 (.06)
-.08* (.03)
.02 (.06)
-.11* (.05)
Private self-consciousness
Thought Self
.05 (.06)
-.11 (.06)
.06 (.05)
-.09* (.04)
Hard Look
-.07 (.06)
-.09 (.05)
-.03 (.05)
-.05 (.04)
Inner Feelings
-.12* (.05)
-.19* (.05)
-.04 (.06)
-.11* (.04)
Note. a Results show standardized regression weights with standard error in parentheses. Results based on multilevel
models, N = 41 participants, in Mplus 8, using maximum likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard errors,
comparing: (1) estimated ratings made on the 7-days prior to the museum visit (level 1/within-person level, nested
within participants), to reports made on the day of the visit, and the day after the visit; (2) estimated ratings made in
the 7-days prior to the museum visit, to the day of the visit, and the 7-days following the visit. * denotes p < .05; no
correction for multiple comparisons.
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Changes in Attitudes.
In the Daily Diary assessments, we detected several significant results. Beginning with
the attitude questions (Table 1), two factors showed a linear trend. People indicated rising scores
on the QCAE Affective empathy/Emotion contagion question regarding feeling that the people
they were with had “an influence on their mood” (see also Figure 6, top), and showed a similar
pattern for the private self-consciousness item “today I paid attention to my inner feelings” when
comparing pre-visit scores, the day of the visit, and the day following the visit.
There were also several significant quadratic effects. A significant result was again
detected for paying attention to inner feelings. Both of the empathic concern items—"today I, felt
concern for the less fortunate” and “…felt touched by things I saw happen”—as well as both
prosocialness items—“…I tried to help others” and “…felt what others felt”—were elevated on
the day of the museum visit but decreased on the day following the visit (Figure 6, top).
Similarly, overall life satisfaction, satisfaction with family relations, satisfaction with significant
other relations, and satisfaction with socializing increased the day of the museum visit but
decreased the day after (Figure 6, bottom).
In the assessment of attitudes considering effects over the following week, among
quadratic trends, we duplicated most of the above results, with significant findings for “concern
for the less fortunate,” “feeling touched,” “trying to help others,” “feeling what others felt,”
“paying attention to inner feelings,” and for “satisfaction with family relations,” “significant
other relations,” and with “socializing”—again, suggesting, in light of the above findings, that
these effects may have lasted only one day. The only factor reported as significant in the day-
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after analysis that did not reach significance in the week-after was overall life satisfaction.
However, this showed similar trends.
Finally, we detected quadratic trends for two new items. The QCAE cognitive empathy
item—“Today, I tried to consider other people’s feelings before I did something”—increased
from the baseline to the evening of the exhibition visit, and then fell over the following week. A
similar pattern was found for the private self-consciousness item “Today, I thought about myself
a lot”. Due to the lack of significant results using the following day assessments, these findings
might be interpreted to suggest that both items had a slightly longer elevated period.
Changes in Mood.
For reported mood, we found a similar pattern of temporary change. Results (Table 2)
revealed significant patterns for only two items. “Jealousy” showed a quadratic pattern whereby
it decreased on the day of the visit but returned to pre-visit levels by the next day. On the other
hand, feeling “irritable” showed a quadratic pattern with a brief rise the day of the visit, and, once
again, falling back by the next day. Similar results were found for jealousy when using the
following week as an endpoint. Feeling irritable did not reach significance, presumably, as with
the general lack of many mood findings, due to the rather high day-to-day variance.
Table 2.
Study 2, Daily Diary: MLMs predicting changes in daily mood (“today, I felt…”) in the
Week Prior to, the Day of, the Day After, and the Week After an Exhibition Visit (“Show
Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Pre-Week,
Day of Visit, Day After Visit
Pre-Week,
Day of Visit, Post-Week
Pre-Week,
Immediately Post-Visit (day),
Day of Visit (evening)
Linear
Quadratic
Linear
Quadratic
Linear
Quadratic
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mood
Enthusiastic
.02 (.05)a
.02 (.04)
-.04 (.07)
.01 (.05)
-.02 (.05)
.24* (.05)
Cheerful
-.05 (.05)
.05 (.04)
-.08 (.06)
.03 (.05)
-.08 (.05)
.25* (.05)
Relaxed
.01 (.06)
-.01 (.04)
.07 (.06)
.01 (.06)
.025 (.12)
-.07 (.09)
Content
.05 (.05)
.01 (.04)
-.01 (.06)
-.01 (.05)
.00 (.11)
.05 (.07)
Gratitude
-.04 (.05)
.02 (.04)
-.08 (.06)
.01 (.05)
-.08 (.09)
.01 (.09)
Confident
.02 (.05)
-.03 (.04)
-.04 (.07)
-.06 (.05)
.05 (.05)
.08 (.06)
Irritable
-.01 (.05)
-.09* (.05)
.05 (.06)
-.09 (.07)
.12 (.06)
-.04 (.06)
Anxious
-.07 (.06)
-.03 (.05)
.01 (.07)
-.01 (.06)
.02 (.07)
.08 (.05)
Tired
-.02 (.06)
.01 (.04)
-.05 (.06)
.00 (.05)
-.07 (.12)
.32* (.07)
Gloomy
-.05 (.05)
-.05 (.04)
-.11 (.06)
-.10 (.06)
.10 (.11)
-.16 (.09)
Jealous
-.02 (.07)
.11* (.03)
.04 (.07)
.16* (.04)
-.16* (.04)
.17* (.03)
Guilt
.00 (.04)
-.05 (.05)
.00 (.07)
-.07 (.07)
.15 (.12)
-.07 (.07)
Shame
-.04 (.05)
.05 (.04)
-.07 (.05)
.05 (.06)
-.15 (.10)
-.03 (.06)
Stressed
.02 (.06)
-.08 (.04)
.04 (.06)
-.09 (.06)
--- ---
Note. a Results show standardized regression weights with standard error in parentheses. Results based on multilevel
models, N = 41 participants, in Mplus 8, using maximum likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard errors,
comparing: (1) estimated ratings made on the 7-days prior to the museum visit (level 1/within-person level, nested
within participants), to reports made on the day of the visit, and the day after the visit; (2) estimated ratings made in
the 7-days prior to the museum visit, to the day of the visit, and the 7-days following the visit. * denotes p < .05; no
correction for multiple comparisons.
For the mood items, we also calculated one more set of multilevel models, comparing the
estimates from the week before the visit, and the normal daily diary report made on the visit
evening, to the reports made immediately after the art visit, which had been assessed in the post-
visit full survey. This allowed us to determine whether some emotional states were even more
fleetingly influenced, as might have been detected in Study 1, but with the benefit of better
modeling in the natural mood fluctuations day-to-day (right column, Table 2).
We once again detected a significant linear and quadratic effect for “jealousy,” which
appeared to indicate that, although dissipating through the following day (as indicated above),
this response still showed a quite dramatic reduction and then rebound even in the course of one
half-day. Three other emotions showed quadratic effects: “enthusiasm” and “cheerful” both
dropped significantly below baseline immediately following the visit but then returned to
baseline levels by the end of the day—essentially mirroring the finding of an immediate
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reduction in positive emotion when measured pre-/post-visit in Study 1. We also found a
temporary decrease in “tired”.
Relations between Daily Diary Results and Ratings, Art Experience
Correlations between the diary results and the art experience, personality, and baseline
measures (Table S11, Supplementary Materials) once again revealed few notable relations.
Rating the art as more ‘good,’ ‘meaningful,’ and ‘potent’ correlated to larger increases between
the estimated 7-day pre-visit period average and the day of the exhibition visit regarding ‘feeling
that one had been deeply involved with characters of artistic media’ and to ‘taking a hard look at
oneself’. Art interest, political orientation, and religious importance again showed no notable
correlations.
Comparing Diary ( “today I…”) and Full Survey (“usually, I…”) Question answers
Finally, for exploratory purposes, we considered how the differences in answers,
measured pre-/post-visit, to the daily diary questions tended to relate to the pre-/post-visit
differences in the full survey answers, by the same participants. These are shown in Table A4 as
correlations between the daily diary difference scores, as assessed on the evening of the visit
minus the prior week estimate, and the difference score in the full survey immediately post-visit
minus Day-1 answers. Correlations were generally small/non-significant. However, we did find
some general negative relations between many answers, especially for empathic concern items
and involving the change in diary answers from baseline to those over the following week.
General Discussion and Conclusion
This paper investigated the potential impacts of art engagement on viewer prosocial and
empathetic attitudes and behaviors, as well as mood. It had two broad aims: (1) By selecting
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specific DVs related to the exhibition theme—artworks reflecting physical and psychological
wounding through war or power imbalances and curatorial decisions aiming at acceptance and
support for marginalized individuals or refugees—we tested the efficacy of an art exhibition to
address such societal challenges. (2) We also employed both a typical pre- and post-intervention
survey design, with two timepoints and standard batteries regarding more hypothetical answers to
how people would feel or respond, typically (Study 1); in addition, we employed a Daily Diary
design in which individuals reported on how they had actually felt or acted each day for the
weeks prior and following the visit (Study 2). Thus, we provide an important new window into
the duration and nature of impacts, with the results adding important new insights into both study
aims, as well as raising new issues and questions for future research:
Pre-/Post-Intervention Design—Can we Detect Some Attitude Change?
In the pre-post paradigms, we did find some impacts on attitudes as detected via a change
in the agreement with the provided scales. This involved (Study 1) a general reduction in
agreement with statements related to xenophobia, as well as with the cognitive empathy aspect
“online simulation,” a general ability to overtly put oneself in the shoes of another by imaging
what they might be feeling, and in the affective empathy aspect “peripheral responsivity,” the
relative tendency to deeply feel or get involved in emotions denoted in media. This was also
concomitant with both a general increase in negative emotion, a reduction in positive emotion,
and increased social emotions (guilt and shame). Similar results were essentially replicated in
Study 2, when comparing between the baseline assessment (administered, in this case, one week
before the visit) and compared to immediately after the visit, with especially the same directions
of effect across measures and, here, with significant decrease in self-assessed prosocialness.
When assessed before and after visiting an exhibition (Study 1), or (as in Study 2) when
measured against a baseline one week before the visit, some impacts could thus be detected
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across a sample of visitors. Results from Study 1 and Study 2 individually, as well as
implications arising from both studies in concert, add important new datapoints to the demand for
studies on the ability of art to produce, and of art-centered research to detect, such impacts on
attitudes of a visitor (Klöckner & Sommer, 202; Sommer et al., 2019). In both Study 1 and 2, the
detected changes also showed rather low, non-significant correlations to other factors such as
prior art knowledge or training, political affiliation, whether participants were recruited off the
streets or were students, or even whether one had or had not read the exhibition labels. This
suggests a rather general main effect for the exhibition, in line with the curator aims, and lending
some credence to the potential ability to detect such systematic changes in a pre-/post-design.
Potential Issues or Questions from the Pre-/post-Results—Paradigm Confounds, Direction
of Effects
At the same time, the findings also provided compelling support for the demand for more,
and for alternative, assessments. First, it is possible that there could have been some, albeit slight,
evidence for potential paradigm-related confounding impacts. The propensity for only the
transitive mood and some attitude measures to show modulations, while more behavior-related
measures (e.g., Social Value Orientation) did not show change, might support a fleeting, variable
(e.g., Egloff et al., 1995; Ryan et al., 2010), possibly even social-driven artifact of the testing
design. Similar support might be found in the increase in negative social emotions as found in
Study 1, such as guilt and shame. Although these notably did not actually show a correlation with
changes in the DVs, these results could suggest some impact from the social setting or context. In
Study 2, the generally lower effect sizes for all DVs, obtained when comparing reports made
immediately after the visit, but when participants were not being directly observed by a
researcher, and further against those made at least one week before the visit, and thus perhaps not
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as salient in the minds of the participants, could also lend support to some test-retest artifacts
(e.g., Chen & Risen, 2010; Izuma & Murayama, 2013).
Perhaps even more compelling, however, are two additional implications: (1) Even with
the pre-/post-design potentially driving effects, we found little evidence of modulation. For most
measures there was no detectable change. Following a Bonferroni correction, almost no survey
results retained significance in either of the studies. This was concomitant, in both studies, with
generally small effect sizes (see Tables 1-3). These rather minimal effects and mixed patterns of
findings tend to follow past literature (e.g., on attitudes regarding both immigration, Aricat et al.,
2014 and climate change, Sommer et al., 2019), and can be interpreted to provide an argument
against testing artifacts as major drivers of our findings. See also the different directions of
effects in attitude, and a lack of correlation between, for example, mood (including the social
emotions, guilt, shame, etc.) and attitude changes.
On the other hand, the findings from both studies support especially an argument for
rather transitory impacts from the art. As further evidence for this, in Study 2, when participants
were provided an opportunity to answer the same batteries one week after the visit, we found no
significant changes from either previous time point, with or without correction, and with
evidence suggesting that the results may, if anything, have drifted back, sometime in the
subsequent week, towards the pre-visit means.
(2) When looking to the actual directions of change, we also found rather interesting
trends. Individuals did tend to report (in Study 1, and duplicated in Study 2) less agreement with
xenophobia-related scales—suggesting, post-visit, less support for general statements against, for
example, welcoming immigrants into their country. However, we also found a similar reduction
in most other batteries involving empathy and prosocial attitudes. That is, people reported
generally lowered agreement with the prosocial or empathy aspects after visiting the art.
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On the surface, this might seem rather surprising. This could be interpreted to suggest that
the art was having an opposite effect of what was intended. However, this may connect to how
the battery questions were framed. Where the xenophobia scales asked questions about how
people thought the world or their country’s actions should be, and thus the post-test showed less
agreement with these statements, the empathy scales—which followed the original attitude
batteries—assessing how people thought they usually or hypothetically act or feel. Thus, a
reduction could be interpreted to suggest a realization or adjustment on the parts of participants
that, despite their initial answers, they were less able to successfully do these acts than they had
previously thought—perhaps made salient as a result of the exhibition. It is of course possible
that this could be attributed more to the general tendency to use multiple chances to answer as a
means of better situating one’s answers on a scale itself (e.g., Chen and Risen, 2010; Izuma &
Murayama, 2013). However, especially given the nature of the topic and the aims of the curators
to create such response, this could be an intriguing example of self-reflection and better situating
or even “construction” of opinions as a part of the intervention context (see e.g., Amir & Levav,
2008; Solomon, 1949).
Daily Diary Results
Turning to the Study 2 Daily Diary findings, the evidence nicely extends from and helps
to further articulate the above results and suggestions. First, a key finding was the evidence of
generally high day-to-day fluctuations, as measured via low ICCs (<.50, Koo & Li, 2016), in
most of the questions when measured daily over the sampling period—notably moods, all
empathy and prosocialness items, as well as self-reflection questions. This, on one hand,
provided further evidence for the need of longitudinal sampling designs. Due to a propensity for
individuals to naturally fluctuate day-to-day in how they answer, using only one or two data
points as in the first studies may indeed provide rather noisy or arbitrary findings (Amir & Levav,
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2008; Hey, 2001; Ryan et al., 2010)—and perhaps also omitting small changes and thus
explaining the low effect sizes above. Notably, in the daily diary results as well, only financial
and family-relations satisfaction, which could be expected to be less sensitive to micro changes,
were held more constant across the testing period. This may also speak to the importance of our
question constructions in Study 2, which again asked participants to report on what they had
actually done or thought that day, which may have allowed to better detect changes as opposed to
the hypothetical constructions.
In turn, by using a multilevel modeling method, which took into account these natural
fluctuations and assessed estimated changes from the first baseline week to the reports made at
the post-visit evening, on the following day, and over the following week period, we did detect
several interesting patterns. These were largely quadratic trends, involving a temporary increase
in empathic concern items—“today I, felt concern for the less fortunate,” “…touched by things I
saw happen”—as well as prosocialness items—“…I tried to help others,” “…felt what others
felt”—and in overall life satisfaction or satisfaction with relations to family or significant others.
All of which were found to increase in the diary report made on the evening of the exhibition
visit. All of the above impacts then also showed a decrease, essentially back to baseline, by the
next day.
The empathy-related item “feeling that people had an influence on one’s mood” and the
private self-consciousness item—“today I paid attention to my inner feelings”—did survive
slightly longer. These were denoted by a linear trend with increase from the baseline, through the
evening of the visit, and continuing to the following day. However, both then showed a similar
tapering-off shortly after. Only the cognitive empathy item—“today I tried to consider other
people’s feelings before I did something”—and the private self-consciousness item—“today, I
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thought about myself a lot”—showed evidence for an increase sustained past the second day and
into the following week, although the exact duration was not determined.
For mood, essentially duplicating the pre-/post-surveys in Study 1, individuals showed a
pattern of temporary increases in negative, and decreases in positive, emotions reported on the
day of the visit, and returning to baseline by the next day. By matching to the report made
immediately after the visit, we further found evidence that most effects were probably even more
fleeting, especially with a brief decrease in positive emotion that had already returned to typical
levels when individuals reported in the evening.
The above daily diary attitude patterns (i.e., a temporary increase in empathetic/prosocial
reports, referring to thoughts and actions that day) also showed essentially the opposite direction
of effects as found in the Study 1-2 full surveys, where we had detected a decrease in the same,
hypothetical, measures. Although typically not significant, this was also accompanied by some
evidence for negative correlation between the changes in the diary and the answers to the same
root questions in the surveys, when provided by the same people, especially when considering
empathy items and looking into the diary for the following week.
Summary—How Did Change Appear Following an Art Visit? How Long Does it last?
Putting these studies together, we might make some new claims about the efficacy of, at
least this, intervention data. First—Can art change minds? It appears that, yes, in two studies,
using a mix of pre-/post and longitudinal sampling techniques, we could detect a rather consistent
impact from viewing an exhibition of art. The results present important evidence for the potential
role of art exhibitions to effect change at the level of more societal challenges, and thus open new
avenues for the application of the arts beyond more well-tested areas of positively changing
mood and well-being. In addition, when comparing the different question constructions, we find
that attitudes might be said to change in two ways—reflecting a general decrease in self-assessed
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empathic or prosocial actions and abilities (“I am not as empathic as I had thought before an art
visit”), but also, when framed in the daily dairy, coinciding with a positive change in trying to act
or think more in these ways, at least during the day if not shortly after the art visit. As noted
above, such a finding—although we feel that it intuitively makes sense to the authors—is quite
new and calls for much further follow-up testing, but does point the way towards the potential
gains that might be found from blending survey and experience sampling methods (e.g., Holt,
2020).
How long, do these effects manifest? When do they happen?: At the same time, the nature
of results, especially when considered across our studies, speak to a rather fleeting duration. In
both the pre-/post-designs (especially salient in Study 2 where we also included more spread-out
points of measurement), and even more notable in Study 2’s daily diary, we find rather consistent
evidence that, while we may find temporary modulations in a number of measures involving
empathy, reflection, and prosocial behavior, these in most cases last only for the day of the art
visit, and are mostly absent by the next evening. These durations are in the range of past
findings—e.g., the 24-96 hours reported across nine interventions targeting implicit racial bias by
Lai et al. (2016); see also Cracknell et al. (2016) regarding similar, even shorter rebound effects
with mood.
This finding, while providing some first evidence on duration, of course could be
interpreted to suggest an inefficacy of an art exhibition to effect substantial, lasting
attitude/behavior change. It may especially be that these short effects might have to do with the
single intervention design. Past studies have suggested that more longitudinal interventions such
as joining a class or multiple sessions spread over weeks or months might lead to more sustained,
even additive findings (see e.g., Lai et al., 2016). At the same time, a single exhibition is the
format whereby many individuals might meet art with societal challenges-related aims. It is key
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to understand such interventions so that we might start to make meaningful comparisons.
Interestingly, by comparing our two methods, we might also find some evidence for delayed
impacts on the viewers, with several findings, which did not show immediate change, emerging
in reported thoughts and behavior when assessed at the end of the day. Further, especially
thinking of how others might feel and showing some reflective awareness of one’s self and inner
feelings did show a more prolonged change over days or even the following week. Such a
“sleeper effect” (Pratkanis et al., 1988; see also Frey & Rogers, 2014) following necessary
reflection, primed from the art experience, also presents an intriguing basis for follow-up study.
One can also take a pragmatic view—if visiting an exhibition in one afternoon tends to
produce reflection on one’s self, an awareness of one’s limitations, and increases one’s attempts
at empathic and prosocial actions, even if only for that day, when multiplied by all the hundreds,
and in some exhibitions many thousands, of visitors who do come into contact with the art, is this
not a worthwhile endeavor? Given the wealth of art in our society, it is heartening that it can be
put to change—if only for a moment, each time.
We hope that the methods and evidence for art efficacy, although exploratory here and in
need of more expansive, controlled studies, will serve as a compelling template for future
investigation and discussion into this topic of art’s impact and duration toward a number of
societal challenges.
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Footnotes
1 Perhaps best known is the idea of ‘Art for art's sake’ (L'art pour l'art), suggesting that
‘true art’ and artists should be divorced from utility (Goins, 2015; Zangwill, 1999). Summarized
nicely by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (2003, p. 202), “Art… is that thing having only to do
with itself—the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art.” He continues, however, to
provide a succinct version of the counter-argument, as well as touching on a key question for the
present paper: “unfortunately, there are no examples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will
ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, everything with an end
that exists outside that thing, i.e., I want to sell this, or I want this to make me famous and loved,
or I want this to make me whole, or worse, I want this to make others whole” (italics added).
2 For example, Aricat et al. (2014) reported a study where post-secondary students viewed
an art exhibition in which the plight of migrant workers was depicted in various media. Answers
to surveys, pre-/post-viewing, showed only a change in one of three expected factors—a
reduction in professed identification with viewers’ own national identify—but no changes in
measures regarding acceptance towards or willingness to actively help immigrants. Sommer et al.
(2019) assessed an art installation meant to let participants experience different degrees of air
pollution in cities. Visitors showed increased agreement to “do something to actively prevent
climate change/environmental problems in the future” when measured pre-/post-visit. However,
effect sizes were d = 0.07, corresponding to a mean change of 0.1 on a 7-point scale. Pitt (2019)
reported a pre-/post- study on climate-change related music (Cheryl Leonard’s “Ablation Zone
from Antarctica: Music from the Ice,” 2014), meant to “viscerally or emotionally” connect
viewers with the impact of climate change, and contrasted against a scientific article, a
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presentation of both article and music, and an unrelated musical piece (Mozart’s Piano Sonata
K.283 in G Major). The authors report small increases in implicit and explicit attitudes, however
with no differences between conditions (see similar results in Hahn & Berker, 2021).
3 Even in present art-intervention research, there is some evidence of report-versus-
behavior disconnects. In the study on an art installation (“Pollution Pods”) referenced above,
targeting awareness of pollution in urban spaces, Sommer et al. (2019) report a small change in
“environmental awareness”. The authors also offered, as a means of tracking resulting behavior, a
free license to a commercial app to track participant’s carbon footprints and to receive pro-
environmental alternatives to polluting activities. This resulted in an opt-in rate of 2%. Keller et
al. (2020), in addition to assessing attitudes, offered participants either a chance to win a raffle for
20-50€ or to donate their chance to an environmental organization, with only 48% actually
opting-in to the loss of potential money. See also, for example, a meta-analysis of financial
education programs, which suggests that these explain only about 0.1% of variance in financial
behaviors (Fernandes et al., 2014).
4 The introductory description was as follows: “In this study we aim to understand how
people understand and judge artworks in a real-life context. With your participation you are
contributing to our knowledge of psychological processes and phenomena. It is a strictly
behavioral study. You will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire, then visit the "Show me your
wound" exhibition and finally fill out a short questionnaire about your experience afterwards.”
5 For the purpose of full disclosure regarding methods and assessments, note that the post-
survey also included questions targeting aspects of the experience intended for another study,
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which will not be discussed further in the present paper. These included asking participants about
specific emotions that they thought that the artists/curator had intended, using a list of 38 items.
Viewers were also asked to answer the questions ‘Did you have a sense of the curators’/artists’
presence?’, ‘Did you think about the way that the artists/curators must have felt when
making/selecting the art?’, and ‘Did you have a sense of what the curator was thinking when
making the exhibition?’ (7-point scale). The post-survey also included questions assessing
awareness of the museum shop, which the museum staff were interested in.
6 The Study 2 baseline survey also asked participants to complete batteries involving
personality aspects intended for a different project and not discussed further in the present paper.
These included: Big 5 personality, Need for Affect, Need for Closure Scale, Need for Cognition,
private self-consciousness, Social Dominance Orientation.
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Appendix
Table A1.
Study 1: Changes in Mood and Neutral Object Satisfaction, Pre- and Post-visit to Art
Exhibition (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Mean change
(post-pre)
t
p
effect size
η2
Positive emotion
-0.854
-3.622
.001*
.247a
Negative emotion
0.854
3.404
.002*
.225
emotion arousal
0.146
0.675
.504
.011
enthusiastic
-0.415
-1.855
.071
.079
cheerful
-0.561
-2.271
.029☨
.114
relaxed
-0.366
-1.333
.190
.043
content
0.073
0.261
.795
.002
gratitude
0.098
0.344
.732
.003
confident
0.171
0.784
.438
.015
irritable
0.098
0.400
.691
.004
anxious
0.366
1.621
.113
.062
tired
0.220
0.942
.352
.022
gloomy
1.146
5.429
.000*
.424
jealous
-0.024
-0.117
.907
.001
guilt
0.805
3.159
.003*
.200
shame
0.439
2.293
.027☨
.116
Neutral object satisfaction
-0.02091
-1.030
.309
.026
Note. Results based on repeat measures t-test, N = 41 participants, with time as within-participant factor
(immediately pre-exhibition visit, immediately post-visit), based on answers to questions “how do you feel right
now?” (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). * denotes significance, corrected for multiple comparisons (familywise
Bonferroni, adjusted alpha = .00312; .05/ 16 mood items, excluding Neutral Object Satisfaction). ☨ = p < .05,
uncorrected. Effect sizes (η2) may be roughly interpreted following the convention of Cohen (1988) as follows:
small > 0.01; medium > 0.06; large > 0.14.
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Table A2.
Study 1: Changes in Empathic, Prosocial, and Xenophobic Attitudes and Behaviors (‘How
do you generally or usually act/feel?’), Pre- and Post-visit to Art Exhibition (“Show Me
Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Mean change
(post-pre)
t
p
effect size
η2
QCAE Cognitive Empathy
-0.112
-1.738
.090
.070
QCAE Affective Empathy
-0.144
-1.878
.068
.081
QCAE Perspective taking (Cog.)
-0.039
-0.549
.586
.007
QCAE Online Simulation (Cog.)
-0.185
-2.102
.042☨
.099
QCAE Emotion contagion (Aff.)
0.110
1.098
.279
.029
QCAE Peripheral responsivity (Aff.)
-0.451
-3.013
.004*
.185
QCAE Proximal Responsivity (Aff.)
-0.091
-0.775
.443
.015
Xenophobia
-0.195
-2.720
.010☨
.156
Empathic concern
-0.066
-0.775
.443
.015
Prosocialness
-0.043
-0.880
.384
.019
Social Value Orientation (money
assignment)
-0.465
-0.474
.639
.006
Note. Results based on repeat measures t-test, N = 41 participants, with time as within-participant factor
(immediately pre-exhibition visit, immediately post-visit). * denotes significance, corrected for multiple comparisons
(familywise Bonferroni, adjusted alpha = .00417, .05/12, including all factors shown in table as well as Neutral
Object Satisfaction). ☨ = p < .05, uncorrected. Effect sizes (η2) may be roughly interpreted following the convention
of Cohen (1988) as follows: small > 0.01; medium > 0.06; large > 0.14.
FOR A MOMENT, MAYBE [PREPRINT]
60
Table A3.
Study 2: Results of repeat-measures ANOVA comparison of Changes in Empathic,
Prosocial, and Xenophobic Attitudes and Behaviors (‘How do you generally or usually
act/feel?’), 1-1½ weeks pre-, immediately post-, and 1 week post-exhibition visit (“Show Me
Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Mean change
(Post-visit vs. Day 1;
Day 20 vs. Day 1)
F
p
η2
QCAE Cognitive Empathy
0.089; 0.074
0.961
.389
.037
QCAE Affective Empathy
0.038; 0.045
0.180
.836
.007
QCAE Perspective taking (Cog.)
0.054; 0.135
1.152
.293
.044
QCAE Online Simulation (Cog.)
0.124; 0.013
1.362
.265
.052
QCAE Emotion contagion (Aff.)
0.260; 0.240
2.384
.103
.087
QCAE Peripheral responsivity (Aff.)
-0.231; -0.144
1.184
.314
.045
QCAE Proximal Responsivity (Aff.)
0.087; 0.038
0.426
.655
.017
Xenophobia
0.008; 0.069
0.417
.661
.016
Empathic concern
-0.077; -0.038
0.375
.689
.015
Prosocialness
-0.213; -0.209
5.234
.009☨
.200
Social Value Orientation
1.387; -2.215
3.042
.057
.117
Neutral Object satisfaction
0.077; 0.082
3.127
.053
.111
Note. Results based on repeat measures ANOVA, with time as within-participant factor (Day-1/one plus week pre-
visit, immediately post-visit, Day-20/roughly one week post-visit); N = 26 participants per scale due to issue with
survey software which randomly omitted certain scales across participants (N = 38). * denotes significance after
correction for multiple comparisons (familywise Bonferroni, adjusted alpha = .00417, p = .05/12). ☨ = p < .05,
uncorrected. Effect sizes (η2) may be roughly interpreted following the convention of Cohen (1988) as follows:
small > 0.01; medium > 0.06; large > 0.14.
FOR A MOMENT, MAYBE [PREPRINT]
61
Table A4.
Study 2, Daily Diary: Correlations between Changes in answers to full survey question (“I
usually…”) and corresponding daily diary (“today, I…”) regarding empathic and prosocial
attitudes before and after art exhibition (“Show Me Your Wound,” Dom Museum Vienna).
Daily diary difference
[evening of visit
– prior week (est. ave.)]
AND
Full survey difference
[immediately after visit – Day-1
baseline]
Daily diary difference
[following week (est. ave.).
– prior week (est. ave.)]
AND
Full survey difference
[immediately after visit – Day-1
baseline]
People influence/influenced mood (QCAE)
.126
-.135
Consider/Considered others’ feelings (QCAE)
-.054
.040
Imagine/Imagined friend's perspective (QCAE)
-.243
.316
Deeply involved with feelings of character (QCAE)
-.051
-.236
Tender feelings for less fortunate (Emp. Conc.)
.420*
-.045
Touched by things (Emp. Conc.)
.032
-.363
Try/Tried to help others (Prosoc.)
.077
.228
Intensely feel/felt what others feel (Prosoc.)
-.138
.403
Note. results based on Pearson product moment correlation analyses, two-tailed. Daily diary changes based on
Estimated Averages using multilevel model in Mplus 8, Maximum Likelihood with fixed effects and robust standard
errors. * denotes p < .05; uncorrected for multiple comparisons.
