Trupp and colleagues learned that there are significant psychological benefits to looking at visual art and cultural content electronically, even for brief periods of time. The researchers report that “When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated—in a growing body of evidence—with positive outcomes in wellbeing and mental health. . . . Participants [in this study] . . . were asked to engage with one of two online exhibitions from Google Arts and Culture (a Monet painting or a similarly-formatted display of Japanese culinary traditions). With just a 1-2 min exposure, both improved negative mood, state-anxiety, loneliness, and wellbeing. . . . improvements in mood correlated with aesthetic appraisals and cognitive-emotional experience of the exhibition. . . . The ‘non-art’ stimulus. . . . explored a diagram in the shape of a bento box, containing photos and facts introducing the viewer to the history and traditions of Japanese food, and included images of food and food-related activities, such as harvesting or drinking.”
MacKenzie Trupp, Giacomo Bignardi, Kirren Chana, Eva Specker, and Matthew Pelowski. 2022. “Can a Brief Interaction with Online, Digital Art Improve Wellbeing? A Comparative Study of the Impact of Online Art and Culture Presentations on Mood, State-Anxiety, Subjective Wellbeing, and Loneliness.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.782033