Pelowski and colleagues evaluated the continuing effects of viewing art on how people think/feel. They “assess[ed] 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. . . . 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.”
Matthew Pelowski, Katherine Cotter, Eva Specker, Joerg Fingerhut, MacKenzie Trupp, and Klaus Speidel. “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.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000670