A logging your heart rate in a gallery can feel like intrusive monitoring, and it also turns your attention toward what you are feeling. To see which effect wins, a randomized trial had some visitors to a temporary art exhibition wear one, and then checked their emotions and their memory of the works. What came out?
Both the pleasure and the memory went up. Visitors wearing the band reported more pleasant emotions and remembered the artworks better, and the memory advantage was still there six days after the visit. In a further condition, about the emotions felt in one room improved memory for the artworks in that room. Attention paid to feedback is doing work that its accuracy cannot explain.
Museums want to know what a visitor feels, and wearable monitors look like a way to find out. A device on the wrist is never a neutral instrument. Wearing one can change how a person attends to the art in front of them, which is the very thing it is there to capture.
The handed heart rate wristbands to some visitors at a temporary exhibition, recorded their emotions during the visit, and tested their of the works. Those wearing the band reported more pleasant emotions and remembered more, and the gap held when they were tested again six days later.
Then the sharper manipulation. Some visitors received fake feedback about what they had supposedly felt in a particular room, and memory for the artworks in that room improved too. Pointing attention at the experience appears to matter more than measuring it correctly.
None of this guarantees a band will improve every exhibition, or that every visitor is comfortable being monitored. The authors have to hold the useful result and the awkward one together. The technology can genuinely enhance a visit, and the sharpest version of the effect came from telling people something untrue.
wat. Visitors who wore a pulse-reading wristband remembered more of the artworks six days after leaving.
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Exhibition design can shape what people carry home, even when the technology showing them numbers is not telling them anything true.
How do we know?
A randomized controlled trial at a temporary exhibition compared visitors with and without the device, recorded emotions during the visit, and tested recognition of the artworks again six days later.
What is still unknown
One temporary exhibition, and the false feedback existed as an experimental condition. Nothing here recommends misleading museum visitors, and nothing settles whether people find the monitoring comfortable.
Learn something?
Where to next
What does an explanation beside a painting do to the way we look?museums
Do two minutes in front of art online change how you feel?art
Can a museum visit improve how you feel, or is it just an outing?art