How Lasting is the Impact of Art?: An Exploratory Study of the Incidence and Duration of Art Exhibition-Induced Prosocial Attitude Change Using a 2-Week Daily Diary Method

Abstract

The use of art exhibitions to mediate people’s attitudes toward societal challenges—climate change, refugees; general prosocialness—is an emerging interest for institutions, artists, policy, and, recently, for empirical study. However, there is still much need for data regarding whether, and in which ways, we might detect attitude change. Even more, important questions concern whether typical designs—pre–post or even post-only assessments of attitude batteries—can reliably detect subtle impacts on thoughts or behaviors. Further, howlong might effects last—a question almost completely unconsidered in empirical research. In this exploratory article, we assess an exhibition focused on empathy and acceptance for refugees, employing both a pre–post design (Study 1) and a daily diary/ecological momentary assessment approach (Study 2), which tracked participants’ reports over 2 weeks regarding how they felt or acted each day, using multilevel modeling to assess changes from a weeklong baseline. The pre–post paradigm detected some reduction in self-assessed xenophobia and increased negative mood. However—matching past findings—effects were small and inconsistent, but also with intriguing suggestions that participants tended to reduce their estimations of their own hypothetical empathic and prosocial abilities, post-visit. The daily diary detected—inversely—increased empathic concern and prosocial thoughts following the visit but which mostly returned to baseline by the next day. “Trying to consider others’ feelings” and “reflecting about oneself” did show increases into the following week, providing some basis for a more extended impact. Although exploratory, by presenting a review of the field and new method, this article aims to provide an intriguing basis for future, hypothesis-driven research.