Examining the Ability of Digital Visual Art Engagement to Cultivate Empathy and Social Connection

Abstract

We aimed to impact social connectedness and perspective taking using visual art-based psychoeducational materials and skill-building exercises. Participants (N = 381) were assigned to one of three conditions. Within the perspective taking condition, people took different viewpoints when viewing art. Within the social connection condition, people considered how art can help in reflecting on their relationships. Within the art education control, people focused on structural elements when viewing art. People completed 4 virtual gallery visits and measures of empathy, social connection, and loneliness at baseline, following each visit, and one-week post intervention. Participants reported their level of immersion and reflectiveness following each visit. Results suggest the conditions did not show changes one week post intervention; however, there were interesting findings post-visit. First, reflection was highest in the perspective taking condition, and the social connection condition showed increases in reflection across time. Second, the social connection condition showed reductions in loneliness.

Keywords

art social connection loneliness perspective taking empathy

Empathy is on the decline within the United States (Konrath et al., 2011) and the U.S. Surgeon General (2023) declared that the country is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation. Given the deleterious effects of loneliness and social isolation (e.g., increased mortality, Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015; increased rates of mental health conditions, Beutal et al., 2017; increased risk of dementia, Penninkilampi et al., 2018) and the negative consequences of reduced empathy (e.g., higher levels of depression, Green et al., 2018; greater aggression, Batanova & Loukas, 2011, 2014), such trends are concerning.

It is unsurprising that research has sought to find ways of increasing social connection and cultivating empathy. Empathy training programs have been developed for young children to improve perspective taking (e.g., Aslan & Akyol, 2020) as well as to improve empathy for specific populations (e.g., Hirsh et al., 2019; Mann et al., 2023; Tompkins et al., 2015). The interventions take a variety of approaches, such as using mindfulness-based approaches as a potential avenue for increasing perspective taking and empathic concern (Block-Lerner et al., 2007). Likewise, a variety of interventions to improve social connection and reduce loneliness have been explored (see Zagic et al., 2022), with interventions taking varied approaches, such as trying to increase levels of social contact (e.g., Choi et al., 2020; Lindsay et al., 2019) and quality of social connections and interactions (e.g., Kall et al., 2020; Theeke et al., 2016). In the present research, we examine engagement with visual art as one potential way in which to build feelings of social connection and empathy. Specifically, we build upon existing efforts within art engagement practices to develop psychoeducational content and viewing guides to encourage specific viewing practices aimed at these outcomes.

Visual art engagement has been associated with a range of benefits (see Cotter & Pawelski, 2022 for review)—viewing visual art has been associated with physiological benefits (e.g., reductions in cortisol concentration, Clow & Fredhoi, 2006; lower blood pressure, Mastandrea et al., 2019; lower biological health risk, Lee et al., 2021) as well as self-reported flourishing benefits (e.g., lower stress, Fekete et al., 2023; Law et al., 2021; increased subjective well-being, Wheatley & Bickerton, 2017). Additionally, visiting art museums has been associated with lower risks of developing depression and anxiety disorders (Cuypers et al., 2012; Fancourt & Tymoszuk, 2018) as well as emotion-related benefits, including enhanced positive affect (e.g., Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, et al., 2024; Schall et al., 2018; Thomson et al., 2018) and feeling uplifted and engaged (Herron & Jamieson, 2020).

A substantial amount of work has focused specifically on the benefits of visual art engagement for social connection and related outcomes (e.g., loneliness, social isolation, etc.). Further, art museum professionals identify outcomes related to social connection and building community as factors art museums should aim to impact for their visitors (Cotter, Crone et al., 2023). Art museum visitation has been associated with increased social inclusion (Herron & Jamieson, 2020), reductions in social disconnect (Koebner et al., 2019), and feeling better equipped to connect with others (Roberts et al., 2011), and online art engagement has additionally been associated with reductions in loneliness (Trupp et al., 2022). Further, museums can be used to promote cultural heritage and foster community engagement to improve social functioning (Besoain et al., 2022; Brown, 2019). Unsurprisingly, museums have developed programs specifically to target outcomes related to social connection (e.g., Dodd & Jones, 2014; Flatt et al., 2015; Irwin et al., 2022; MacPherson et al., 2009; Roe et al. 2016; Rosenberg et al., 2009) with positive results. The majority of these programs, however, have focused on particular populations, namely older adults or individuals with dementia, and have not been evaluated with experimental designs to more clearly understand the impacts of these programs.

Like social connection, empathy has been identified as an outcome salient to art engagement (Cotter, Crone et al., 2023; Gokcigdem, 2016; Konrath & Kisida, 2021). The term “empathy” is a broad one (Hall & Schwartz, 2019), with varied definitions and components examined across studies, referring generally to experiencing prosocial feelings and behaviors toward others, attempting to consider the perspectives of others, and understanding or experiencing the feelings of others. Here, we focus on two components related to empathy: perspective taking (i.e., taking the point of view of others) and empathic concern (i.e., experiencing prosocial feelings of concern for others; Davis, 1980). Looking at a work of art allows the viewer to assume the perspective the artist (or subject thereof) has of the world, diversifying the human experience and sparking conversations that may otherwise not happen (Bailey & Desai, 2005). In other work, research has asked viewers to take the perspective of those depicted in the art—in one study, people were asked to take the perspectives of Native American photographic portrait subjects and when asked to describe the photography subjects, their descriptions were more empathetic and human centered than a control condition (Sherman et al., 2020). Further, the belief that art is a viable way to promote empathy and perspective taking is prominent within art education practices (e.g., Greene et al., 2014; Meeken, 2013; Montero, 2023). Such arguments regarding perspective taking skills have been leveraged to cultivate enhanced skills in domains in which such abilities are vital. For example, within medical training contexts, visual arts engagement has been applied to enhance empathy and perspective taking in general (Guth et al., 2023; Stern, 2023) as well as to applying empathy and perspective taking to specific contexts (e.g., racism within health contexts, Philip et al., 2023). Though the empirical literature on empathy and perspective taking building approaches to art engagement is growing, many art institutions emphasize perspective taking exercises in their teaching and programs (e.g., National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum) with the Minneapolis Institute of Art opening the Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts within their institution.

But the potential of visual art engagement to benefit flourishing is not limited to in-person engagement with art—an emerging literature is focusing on the role digital art engagement can play in improving flourishing. In these studies, findings suggest that digital art engagement can increase positive emotion (Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter, Harrouche, et al., 2023; Igdalova & Chamberlain, 2023) and lower negative emotion (Cotter, Alpys, et al., 2024; Cotter, Harrouche, et al., 2023; Trupp et al., 2022, 2023), reduce loneliness (Trupp et al., 2022), help people relax (Cotter, Alpys, et al., 2024; Cotter, Harrouche, et al., 2023; Igdalova & Chamberlain, 2023), and boost overall well-being (Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter,*** Crone, et al., 2023; Cotter, Harrouche, et al., 2023; Cotter, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, et al., 2024; Trupp et al., 2022). Further, these studies show benefits for a range of digital art engagement forms (i.e., Google Arts and Culture, Trupp et al., 2022; virtual galleries, Cotter et al., 2022; Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, et al., 2024; viewing individual images, Igdalova & Chamberlain, 2023). It is important to note, however, that these digital art engagement studies have not deeply focused on outcomes related to perspective taking or social connection and related outcomes. Given the rise of digital art engagement options available (e.g., Google Arts and Culture, museum-generated virtual galleries, etc.), it is important to understand the impacts of these forms of art engagement.

Although prior work suggests that visual art engagement can benefit social connection and perspective taking, a major limitation is that relatively few studies examining art and well-being, including these outcomes, have used experimental designs or examined change across time beyond simple pre and post assessments (see Clift et al., 2021; Skov & Nadal, 2023), which reduces the ability to draw causal links between the art experience and improvements in these outcomes. In the present research, we examined the ability of a brief online art-based intervention to cultivate perspective taking and social connection. For the purposes of the present research, we focus on self-reported tendencies to engage in perspective taking (i.e., attempting to understand someone's point of view) rather than accuracy of perspective taking efforts. For outcomes related to social connection, we focus on feelings of connectedness to others and to the world and humankind more broadly as well as lack of social connection through assessment of subjective feelings of loneliness.

To test the impacts of the intervention, we conducted a five-week long experimental study in which participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions designed to target perspective taking or social connection or to an art education control condition. In each of the first four weeks, participants were presented with psychoeducational videos describing constructs relevant to their experimental condition and were asked to explore a virtual art gallery for 15 min using the content from the video to guide their experience. In the art-viewing portion of the study, people within each condition were provided with additional guidance of how to engage with the art to align with their experimental condition to encourage specific forms of art viewing, including what forms of perspective taking to engage in, which types of relationships to focus on savoring, or what structural elements of the art to focus attention on. We were specifically interested in how shifting focus of art viewing from common foci (e.g., art historical content, structural components of the work) through the two experimental conditions may influence experiences differently from more typical forms of engagement (as promoted in the control condition). In this vein, we had three pre-registered hypotheses pertaining to changes from baseline assessments taken in the first week and post-test assessment taken in the fifth week:

H1: Participants in the perspective taking condition will show greater improvements in perspective taking than people in the social connection and art education control conditions.

H2: Participants in the social connection condition will show greater improvement in feelings of connectedness than people in the perspective taking and art education control conditions.

H3: Participants in the social connection condition will show greater reduction in loneliness than people in the perspective taking and art education control conditions.

In addition to the outcomes as part of the pre-registered analyses, we also conducted exploratory analyses to examine baseline and post-test changes in empathic concern, depression, anxiety/stress, and overall distress. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to examine changes in social connection and empathy (i.e., perspective taking and empathic concern) immediately following each of the four gallery experiences.

Finally, we considered in exploratory analyses the degree to which each of the conditions may differentially cultivate experiences of immersion and reflection (Shim et al., 2019; Tay et al., 2018; Thapa et al., 2023). These factors have been theorized to be mechanisms through which engagement with the arts can promote flourishing and normative outcomes (e.g., empathy), with early studies suggesting immersion is particularly important (Cotter et al., 2022; Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter, Harrouche, et al., 2023; Cotter, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, et al., 2024). Examining the degree to which the conditions differed in these factors as well as how they predict flourishing outcomes was a secondary aim of this study.

Method

The data collection and analysis plan was pre-registered on the OSF¹ and all study protocols were approved by the University of Pennsylvania IRB.

Initial Screening

Participants

A sample of 1,000 U.S. adults was recruited via Prolific. The sample was representative of U.S. adults with respect to gender, age, and race/ethnicity² (see Table 1 for demographic information). This sample was recruited to ensure technological capability with the gallery apparatus and ability to use the virtual gallery, with the goal of enrolling 600 participants in the main study. Participants were paid $1.00.

Table 1.

Demographic Information.

		Screening (n = 1000)	Invited (n = 848)	Final Sample (n = 381)
Age	M	44.53	44.89	45.77
	SD	15.42	15.52	15.44
	Range	18–85	18–85	18–78
Race	American Indian	0.9%	0.9%	0.1%
	Asian	6.9%	6.5%	6.8%
	Black or African-American	13.4%	12.5%	10.8%
	Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin	4.7%	5.1%	5.5%
	Middle Eastern or North African	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%
	Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander	0.3%	0.3%	0.8%
	White	77.4%	78.3%	80.3%
	Other	0.5%	0.6%	0.8%
Gender	Female	49.7%	50.1%	49.1%
	Male	48.0%	47.2%	48.0%
	Other	2.3%	2.7%	2.9%
Education	Did not finish HS	1.4%	1.7%	2.1%
	HS	13.7%	14.2%	14.4%
	College, no degree	20.7%	20.4%	20.7%
	Associates	11.2%	11.8%	10.8%
	Bachelors	36.4%	35.6%	37.8%
	Masters	12.3%	12.0%	10.2%
	Doctoral/Professional	4.3%	4.4%	3.9%

Procedures

After providing informed consent and completing a demographic questionnaire, participants completed a 3-min visit to a virtual art gallery (see Gallery Apparatus and Artworks section below). To enter the gallery, participants clicked on a thumbnail embedded in the Qualtrics survey platform to make the gallery full screen. To navigate through the gallery, participants used the keyboard arrow keys to move and their mouse to change viewpoint. Participants also had the option to make artworks full screen.

To qualify for the main study, participants needed to launch the gallery into full screen, spend at least 90 s in the gallery, move within the gallery, and enter both rooms in the gallery as instructed. A total of 848 participants met these criteria.

Gallery Apparatus and Artworks

All virtual galleries for the study were created using the Open Gallery for Arts Research (OGAR; Rodriguez-Boerwinkle et al., 2023). This platform provides tools to create and customize gallery layouts and artwork configurations with which participants can interact. When participants were in the gallery their navigation behaviors were tracked (e.g., location in the gallery, what is being viewed, viewing art in full screen, time spent in the gallery) for later analysis.

For the initial screening, a two-room gallery displaying 10 artworks (see Supplementary Table 1) was created. All artworks in this study were from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection and were selected to vary in style and content (see Cotter et al., 2022 for specific details on artwork identification procedures).

Main Study

Participants

A total of 848 participants from the initial screening were invited to the main study, and 600 enrolled. To be retained for the final sample, participants needed to have low scores on inconsistent responding and directed responding questions checking for inattentive or careless responding and complete at least three valid gallery sessions. A valid gallery session was considered one in which people moved at least 10 meters within the gallery, moved their mouse to change their viewpoint, spent at least 10 min in full screen within the gallery, and did not provide a nonsensical answer to an open-ended question describing their gallery experience. The final sample consisted of 381 participants meeting the inclusion requirements (see Table 1).

Procedures

The study lasted for 5 weeks, with one research session per week. In week 1, participants completed baseline measures and individual differences surveys. Following the baseline measures, participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions and completed their first experimental gallery session. Following the experimental session, participants completed additional measures about their gallery experiences. In weeks 2–4 participants completed additional experimental sessions and measures about that week's gallery experience. In week 5, participants completed post-test measures and additional individual difference measures. People were paid $7 for each session, with an additional $5 bonus for completing all five sessions.

Measures

Five flourishing measures were administered in week 1 immediately prior to the first experimental gallery visit and in week 5, one week following the last experimental gallery visit. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) Perspective taking (pre: α = 0.78, post: α = 0.88) and Empathic Concern (pre: α = 0.82, post: α = 0.88) subscales (14 items) were used to assess tendencies to adopt others’ perspective and to have feelings of sympathy and concern for others. Items were rated on a 5-pt. scale from Does not describe me well to Describes me very well.

The Watts Connectedness Scale (Watts et al., 2022; 13 items) Connectedness to Others (pre: α = 0.87, post: α = 0.89) and Connectedness to World subscales (pre: α = 0.87, post: α = 0.92) were used to assess feelings of connection to other people as well as to the world more broadly. Items were rated from 0 (Not at all) to 100 (Entirely).

The UCLA Loneliness Scale-3 (Hughes et al., 2004) is a 3-item measure assessing feelings of loneliness (pre: α = 0.91, post: α = 0.91). Item responses were Hardly ever, Some of the time, and Often.

The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-10 (DASS-10; Halford & Frost, 2021) is a 10-item measure assessing symptoms of depression and anxiety and feelings of stress. Items were rated on a 4-pt. scale from Did not apply to me at all to Applied to me very much or most of the time. Subscales for depression (pre: α = 0.89, post: α = 0.91), stress-anxiety (pre: α = 0.89, post: α = 0.88), and overall distress (pre: α = 0.92, post: α = 0.93) were constructed.

Following each gallery visit, participants also completed the IRI subscales and Watts subscales again—for these scales, items were slightly rephrased to reflect how people felt at that moment. Participants also indicated from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree) the extent to which they felt lonely (a measure of state loneliness). Participants also completed seven items to capture experiences of reflection and immersion during the gallery visit (adapted from Thapa et al., 2023). To capture reflection, participants were asked the degree to which they reflected on the philosophy of life, savored past experiences, and took other people's perspectives while viewing the art. To capture immersion, participants were asked the degree to which they lost track of time, got lost in thought, were completely focused, and had a rewarding experience when viewing the art. All items were rated from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree) and scale scores were computed via averaging responses to each scale's items.

Gallery Construction

The galleries for the four experimental sessions were constructed in OGAR using an identical two-room layout. Each gallery contained 12 artworks, and individual artworks were used in only one gallery. Within each gallery, an equal number of representational and abstract artworks were included, and efforts were made to ensure the art in each gallery represented a range of contents (see Supplementary Table 1). A different gallery was used each week (i.e., each artwork was seen only once by participants), and all experimental conditions were exposed to the same artworks each week.

Experimental Conditions

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions for the duration of the study (see Table 2). Prior to beginning their gallery visit in weeks 1–4, participants watched a brief video (M = 223.92 s, SD = 39.75 s, range = 176 s to 290 s) corresponding to their experimental condition. Each video was structured such that the first portion of the video educated participants on the focal topic of the video (e.g., what the concept of line is within visual art), and the second portion of the video demonstrated, with one representational and one abstract artwork, how to use that information to shape the process of viewing art. Following the video, participants were then given instructions on how to approach their gallery visit that were tied to the content of that week's video.

Table 2.

Experimental Conditions.

Condition	Description
Perspective Taking (N = 132)	Each week, participants are introduced to a concept related to perspective taking (what is perspective taking, identity and perspective, considering multiple perspectives, perspectives when information is unknown) and are shown how to engage in perspective taking with different artworks. During their gallery visit, participants are asked to view the art and focus on the perspective taking technique covered in that week.
Social Connection (N = 120)	Each week, participants are introduced to a form of social connection (intimate, relational, collective, common humanity) and are shown how to make connections to these concepts when viewing art. During their gallery visit, participants are asked to view the art and focus on the level of social connection covered in that week.
Art Education Control (N = 129)	Each week, participants are introduced to an artistic technique (perspective, color, line, composition) and are taught how to recognize these elements in different artworks. During their gallery visit, participants are asked to view the art and focus on the art technique covered in that week.

Note. For full copies of the gallery prompts and copies of the intervention videos, please see the OSF repository: https://osf.io/vw3cq/.

Perspective taking condition. The perspective taking condition video contents were adapted from Harvard University Project Zero's Thinking Routines (https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines; Same and Different; Lenses of Dialogue; Circle of Viewpoints; Step In, Step Out, Step Back) focusing on perspective taking and exploring art. These thinking routines are commonly used within art education contexts. The selected thinking routines emphasize different forms of perspective taking, including focusing on a consideration of how a close other may view the art versus our own thoughts on the work, how people's unique identities shape their views, how more general worldviews or life experiences might shape perspectives, and the perspectives of the artists and their intentions behind their artworks.

Within each week's video, one facet of perspective taking with art was introduced with a discussion of how those perspectives may play a role in how people see the world or experience the same situation. At the end of each video, examples were provided regarding how to practice a specific form of perspective taking with art and to consider how alternate perspectives are similar or different from our own. Prior to entering the gallery, people were provided with instructions to consider their own interpretation of artworks and to then consider the alternate perspectives specified within each prompt. They were also asked to consider how these perspectives were similar and different.

Social connection condition. The social connection video contents were adapted from Chiang et al.’ (2008) research on reminiscence therapy—a type of therapy that involves recalling past events and applying those memories to current relationships (Chiang et al., 2009). The four dimensions featured in the social connection condition reflect the three-dimensional social connectedness structure proposed by Hawkley et al. (2005): intimate connectedness (closeness with a significant person in our lives, such as a spouse or best friend), relational connectedness (interpersonal connections that provide support and sense of closeness), and collective connectedness (sense of belonging and identity associated with group affiliation). To this structure, we added the fourth dimension of common humanity—connection through the shared experiences, values, and traits across the human race—which was adapted from the Othering and Belonging Institute's (2019) The Circle of Human Concern exercises.

Within each week's video, a social connectedness dimension is introduced and provided prompts for people to consider that type of connectedness within their own lives. At the end of each video, examples are given for how looking at art can help people to reflect on and savor that specific form of connectedness within their lives. To encourage people to focus on savoring their connections during the gallery visit, prior to entering the gallery, people were provided with instructions to select artworks that prompted them to think about the targeted dimension of social connectedness and to focus on that while viewing the art.

Art education control. The art education control video contents were developed by museum educators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (SN, AR) who selected topics focused on four essential elements and principles of art (perspective, color, line, and composition) that could broadly apply to all objects in the virtual gallery.

Within each video, the focal topic was introduced, and sample artworks were used to demonstrate how that element of art can shape how we interpret or interact with the art. To encourage people to emphasize the selected element, prior to entering the gallery people were provided with instructions to center that element in their viewing of art in the gallery.

Results

Descriptive statistics for baseline and one-week post-test assessments are presented in Figure 1 (and Supplementary Table 2) and in Table 3 for post gallery visit assessments.

Figure 1.

Baseline and post-test descriptive statistics.

Table 3.

Post-Gallery Visit Descriptive Statistics.

	M	SD_Within	SD_Between	ICC
Perspective Taking
Perspective Taking (IRI)	3.00	0.30	0.62	0.81
Empathic Concern (IRI)	3.05	0.31	0.71	0.84
Lonely	2.03	1.13	0.96	0.42
Connect. To Others (Watts)	53.23	6.44	9.44	0.68
Connect. To World (Watts)	55.77	8.04	25.31	0.91
Reflection	5.45	0.72	0.72	0.50
Immersion	5.24	0.78	0.93	0.64
Social Connection
Perspective Taking (IRI)	2.99	0.26	0.60	0.85
Empathic Concern (IRI)	3.10	0.31	0.68	0.84
Lonely	2.44	1.25	1.13	0.45
Connect. To Others (Watts)	54.13	5.56	9.73	0.75
Connect. To World (Watts)	61.51	821	23.54	0.89
Reflection	4.76	1.03	0.71	0.33
Immersion	5.34	0.78	0.94	0.59
Art Education Control
Perspective Taking (IRI)	2.83	0.29	0.64	0.83
Empathic Concern (IRI)	2.98	0.33	0.70	0.82
Lonely	2.16	1.12	1.13	0.50
Connect. To Others (Watts)	52.82	5.79	9.63	0.74
Connect. To World (Watts)	56.31	7.47	25.03	0.92
Reflection	4.47	0.96	1.12	0.57
Immersion	5.19	0.80	1.07	0.64

Note. ICC = intraclass correlation coefficient.

Analytic Approach

To test our pre-registered hypotheses and address our exploratory aims, we used several analytic approaches. In the first set of analyses, we focused on changes between baseline and 1-week post intervention on four measures—the IRI, the Watts Social Connectedness Scales, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, and the DASS. For these analyses, we conducted multilevel models in R (R Core Team, 2024) using the lme4 (Bates et al., 2015) and lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017) packages, and ggplot2 (Wickham, 2016) was used for data visualizations. Predictors for these models included time, condition, and their interaction.

In the second set of analyses, we focused on changes across time for variables measured immediately following each of the four virtual gallery visits. In these analyses, we focused on three measures—the IRI, the Watts Connectedness Scales, and a single-item loneliness measure. For these analyses, we conducted multilevel models with time, condition, and their interaction as predictors.

In the final set of analyses, we again examined changes across time for variables measured immediately following each of the four virtual gallery visits but examined the roles of immersion and reflection within the visits (measured immediately following each visit). We first examined whether the conditions differed in each variable using multilevel models with time, condition, and their interaction as predictors. We then examined in additional multilevel models whether immersion and reflection predicted change in our three outcome measures using time, immersion and reflection (person-mean centered), and their interactions as predictors.

Baseline and 1-Week Post-Test Comparisons

Pre-Registered Analyses

In our pre-registered analyses, we examined condition changes between the baseline and 1-week post assessments of our perspective taking, social connection, and loneliness variables³ (see Table 4). The conditions did not differ in baseline levels of these outcomes. For these analyses, change across time, membership in the target condition (i.e., perspective taking or social connection = 1; other conditions = 0), and their interaction were entered as predictors into multilevel models.

Table 4.

Pre-Registered Analyses: Condition Predicting Baseline to Post-Test Changes.

	Predictors
Outcome	Time	Target Condition	Time x Condition
Perspective Taking (IRI)	0.04 (0.02)[−0.01, 0.09]	0.03 (0.07)[−0.11, 0.17]	0.01 (0.03)[−0.07, 0.09]
Connectedness to Others (Watts)	−0.98 (0.52)[−1.99, 0.03]	0.07 (1.26)[−2.41, 2.55]	1.34 (0.92)[−0.46, 3.15]
Connectedness to World (Watts)	−0.05 (0.84)[−1.71, 1.60]	5.02 (2.83)[−0.52, 10.57]	1.70 (1.50)[−1.25, 4.65]
Loneliness (UCLA)	−0.04 (0.07)[−0.17, 0.08]	0.32* (0.15)[0.03, 0.60]	−0.17 (0.11)[−0.40, 0.05]

Note. b (SE) [95% CI]. * p < .05.

First, we examined whether the perspective taking condition (1), relative to the social connection and control conditions (0), showed increases in their self-reported perspective taking. The perspective taking condition did not show a greater rate of increase in perspective taking, not supporting H1. There was also no overall change in perspective taking across time.

Next, we examined whether the social connection condition (1), relative to the perspective taking and control conditions (0), showed increases in their connectedness to others and the world and decreases in their loneliness. Collectively, the three conditions did not show changes across the two timepoints in any of the three outcomes. The social connection condition did show higher overall levels of loneliness; however, there was not a significant interaction between time and membership in the social connection condition, not supporting H3. There were no significant condition differences or interactions between time and condition for the connectedness with others or the world outcomes, not supporting H2.⁴

Exploratory Analyses

In addition to the pre-registered analyses, we also completed a series of exploratory analyses examining differences in baseline and post-test reports for self-reported empathic concern, depression, stress/anxiety, and overall distress. The conditions did not differ in baseline levels of these outcomes. For these analyses, time, condition (control condition as reference group; social connection and perspective taking conditions as separate dummy-coded variables), and their interaction were used as predictors in multilevel models (see Table 5). There were no significant effects across time, by condition, or the interaction between time and condition for depression, stress/anxiety, and overall distress. Empathic concern did show a statistically significant increase across time, but no condition differences or interactions were present.

Table 5.

Exploratory Analyses: Condition Predicting Baseline to Post-Test Changes.

	Predictors
Outcome	Time	Perspective Taking	Time x Perspective Taking	Social Connection	Time x Social Connection
Empathic Concern (IRI)	0.07* (0.04)[0.00, 0.15]	0.04 (0.10)[−0.15, 0.23]	−0.06 (0.05)[−0.16, 0.04]	0.01 (0.10)[−0.19, 0.20]	0.04 (0.05)[−0.06, 0.15]
Depression (DASS)	−0.11 (0.15)[−0.40, 0.18]	−0.18 (0.38)[−0.92, 0.56]	−0.28 (0.21)[−0.68, 0.12]	−0.27 (0.39)[−1.03, 0.49]	0.11 (0.21)[−0.31, 0.52]
Stress/Anxiety (DASS)	−0.01 (0.20)[−0.40, 0.38]	0.56 (0.45)[−0.32, 1.44]	−0.39 (0.28)[−0.94, 0.16]	0.31 (0.46)[−0.59, 1.21]	−0.25 (0.29)[−0.81, 0.31]
Distress (DASS)	−0.12 (0.30)[−0.70, 0.46]	0.38 (0.77)[−1.14, 1.89]	−0.66 (0.42)[−1.48, 0.15]	0.04 (0.79)[−1.51, 1.59]	−0.14 (0.43)[−0.98, 0.69]

Note. b (SE) [95% CI]. * p < .05.

Post-Visit Changes

In addition to measuring flourishing outcomes at baseline and 1 week following the last gallery visit, we also measured a subset of outcomes (i.e., perspective taking, empathic concern, connectedness with others, connectedness with the world, and loneliness) immediately following each gallery visit for exploratory analysis. For these analyses, time, condition (control condition as reference group; social connection and perspective taking conditions as separate dummy-coded variables), and their interaction were used as predictors in multilevel models (see Table 6).

Table 6.

Condition Predicting Post-Visit Outcomes.

	Predictors
Outcome	Time	Perspective Taking	Time x Perspective Taking	Social Connection	Time x Social Connection
Perspective Taking (IRI)	−0.00 (0.01)[−0.03, 0.02]	0.10 (0.08)[−0.06, 0.27]	0.02 (0.02)[−0.01, 0.05]	0.16 (0.09)[−0.01, 0.33]	0.00 (0.02)[−0.03, 0.04]
Empathic Concern (IRI)	−0.01 (0.01)[−0.03, 0.02]	0.05 (0.09)[−0.13, 0.23]	0.00 (0.02)[−0.03, 0.04]	0.08 (0.09)[−0.11, 0.26]	0.03 (0.02)[−0.00, 0.07]
Connectedness to Others (Watts)	0.05 (0.24)[−0.42, 0.52]	1.07 (1.35)[−1.57, 3.72]	−0.41 (0.34)[−1.07, 0.25]	1.24 (1.38)[−1.47, 3.95]	0.11 (0.35)[−0.57, 0.79]
Connectedness to World (Watts)	−0.15 (0.31)[−0.76, 0.47]	−1.85 (3.16)[−8.04, 4.34]	0.37 (0.44)[−0.49, 1.24]	3.40 (3.23)[−2.94, 9.74]	0.87 (0.45)[−0.01, 1.76]
Loneliness	−0.04 (0.05)[−0.13, 0.05]	−0.04 (0.18)[−0.39, 0.32]	−0.07 (0.06)[−0.19, 0.06]	0.50** (0.18)[0.13, 0.86]	−0.15* (0.07)[−0.28, −0.02]

Note. b (SE) [95% CI]. * p < .05, ** p < .01.

For the two empathy measures—perspective taking and empathic concern—there were no significant changes across visits nor any condition differences and no significant interaction between time and condition. Connectedness to others followed a similar pattern of no significant changes across time or condition. For connectedness to the world, there was not a statistically significant interaction; however, examination of the condition means showed that the social connection condition did show greater average levels of connectedness to the world following visits. For loneliness, we observed higher average levels of loneliness in the social connection group, but this was qualified by a significant interaction—people in the social connection group showed a greater rate of decrease in loneliness across the gallery visits (see Figure 2(a)).

Figure 2.

Simple slopes of significant interaction effects. Note. These plots indicate interaction effects for outcomes measured following each of the four gallery viewing sessions.

Reflection and Immersion

For our final set of analyses, we examined two constructs—reflection and immersion—recently proposed as mechanisms underlying the relationship between arts engagement and flourishing-related outcomes (Shim et al., 2019; Tay et al., 2018; Thapa et al., 2023). We first examined whether there were condition differences in reflection and immersion measured post-visit. For these analyses, time, condition (control condition as reference group; social connection and perspective taking conditions as separate dummy-coded variables), and their interaction were used as predictors in multilevel models (see Figure 3). For reflection, we found that experiences of reflection increased over time (b = 0.07, SE = 0.04, p = .036) and were higher overall in the perspective taking condition (b = 1.03, SE = 0.14, p < .001). We also observed an interaction between time and the social connection condition (b = 0.17, SE = 0.05, p = .001)—those in the social connection condition showed significant increases in reflection across time (see Figure 2(b))⁵. For immersion, we found that experiences of immersion increased over time (b = 0.07, SE = 0.03, p = .020), but there were no condition differences in immersion or significant interactions between condition and time.

Figure 3.

Distributions of reflection and immersion over time and by condition.

We next examined how experiences of reflection and immersion during the gallery visits predicted post-visit flourishing outcomes (i.e., empathy, social connection, and loneliness). For these models, time, reflection (person-centered), immersion (person-centered), and the two-way interactions between time and reflection and immersion were used as predictors in multilevel models (see Table 7). For the two empathy outcomes (i.e., perspective taking and empathic concern) and social connection outcomes (i.e., connectedness to others and the world), we did not observe changes across time or in relation to reflection or immersion levels. For loneliness, we found that loneliness decreased across time and that greater reflection was associated with higher loneliness; however, this was qualified by a significant interaction—those experiencing average or above average levels of reflection showed decreases in loneliness across time whereas those experiencing low levels of reflection did not show changes in loneliness across time (see Figure 2(c)). Immersion was not associated with loneliness.

Table 7.

Reflection and Immersion Predicting Flourishing.

	Predictors
Outcome	Time	Reflection	Time x Reflection	Immersion	Time x Immersion
Perspective Taking (IRI)	0.01 (0.01)[−0.01, 0.02]	−0.01 (0.02)[−0.04, 0.03]	0.01 (0.01)[−0.01, 0.03]	0.00 (0.02)[−0.04, 0.05]	0.00 (0.01)[−0.02, 0.03]
Empathic Concern (IRI)	0.00 (0.01)[−0.01, 0.02)	0.01 (0.02)[−0.02, 0.04]	−0.01 (0.01)[−0.03, 0.01]	0.04 (0.02)[−0.00, 0.09)	−0.01 (0.01)[−0.03, 0.01]
Connectedness with Others (Watts)	−0.06 (0.14)[−0.33, 0.22]	0.10 (0.36)[−0.61, 0.82]	−0.09 (0.22)[−0.52, 0.33]	0.03 (0.45)[−0.86, 0.91]	−0.02 (0.25)[−0.51, 0.48]
Connectedness with World (Watts)	0.16 (0.18)[−0.20, 0.53]	−0.20 (0.48)[−1.14, 0.74]	0.52 (0.29)[−0.04, 1.09]	0.32 (0.60)[−0.85, 1.49]	0.16 (0.34)[−0.50, 0.82]
Loneliness	−0.12*** (0.03)[−0.17, −0.07]	0.22** (0.07)[0.09, 0.35]	−0.10* (0.04)[−0.18, −0.02]	−0.13 (0.08)[−0.30, 0.03]	0.01 (0.05)[−0.08, 0.10]

Note. b (SE) [95% CI]. * p < .05, ** p < .01.

Discussion

This study aimed to examine whether a series of short online visual art viewing sessions were able to improve empathy, social connection, and loneliness. To do so, we designed three variants of art-viewing experiences that targeted either perspective taking or social connection or a control consisting of viewing practices typically presented in art education contexts. As a secondary aim, we examined how the different viewing conditions cultivated immersion and reflection and how these factors predicted changes in our primary outcomes.

First, we examined changes in perspective taking. In our pre-registered analyses, we did not find evidence that our perspective taking experimental condition increased perspective taking between the baseline and one-week post-test measurements. We also did not see changes in perspective taking immediately post-gallery visit in this experimental condition in exploratory analyses. However, we did find that the perspective taking condition experienced higher levels of reflection in their gallery visits. The higher levels of reflection in this condition are consistent with theoretical conceptualizations of the reflection mechanism (Tay et al., 2018) as a largely cognitive process that involves considering different worldviews and reflecting on currently held perspectives and implicated in the perspective taking process. This heightened reflection suggests that participants were engaged in appropriate perspective taking cognitive processes as instructed.

The lack of change in the perspective taking measure—both following gallery visits and one-week post-test—was unexpected, however. One reason for this lack of change may be the nature of the assessment. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index Perspective Taking subscale emphasizes habits in relation to certain social situations (e.g., seeing both sides in a disagreement, trying to understand someone's perspective when being upset with them) that may have been too far removed from the types of perspective taking exercises within the intervention (e.g., considering how identity shifts viewpoints). Further, this measurement may not have been adequately sensitive to change as there was little within-person variation across measurements or may only show shifts for those at the floor of the scale initially. Future research should examine other measurements that may be more sensitive to change and to examine related constructs (e.g., openness to alternative perspectives, interest in exploring other perspectives) that may be more directly impacted by these types of interventions. These paths may be more fruitful as we did observe changes in empathic concern, which, in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, emphasizes more affective empathy as opposed to cognitive empathy. Alternatively, perspective taking interventions with art may be more powerful when focusing on specific populations (e.g., Native Americans; Sherman et al., 2020) rather than the more general approach used in the present research.

Our second primary goal was to examine changes in social connection and loneliness. In our pre-registered analyses, we did not see changes in social connection and loneliness from baseline to one-week post-test within our social connection experimental group as expected. In additional exploratory analyses, we did see that the social connection condition reported decreases in loneliness in the post-gallery visit assessments. This may suggest that any impacts on loneliness are more likely to be short-term. This is consistent with other work suggesting that visual art engagement impacts may not be long-lived for brief art experiences (Cotter et al., 2022; Pelowski et al., 2024) and most research documenting social benefits of art engagement has assessed such benefits closely following the art engagement (e.g., Newman & McLean, 2004; Roberts et al., 2011).

It is notable, however, that the condition focusing specifically on reflecting on different relationships showed these effects, as much of the research showing social benefits of visual art engagement has not focused on this more individual and reflective approach. Many of the social-oriented programs for art engagement have been in the form of group-based activities and discussions (e.g., Bennington et al., 2016; Roe et al., 2016)—the present findings suggest that there may also be social benefits from individual reflection about personal relationships when engaged in art viewing. This may be especially important for populations that may have challenges participating in synchronous or in-person programs but who would benefit from increased social connections.

We also examined experiences of reflection and immersion within the gallery visits. We found that in the social connection condition, people experienced increasing levels of reflection across their gallery visits. Further, we found that people who experienced higher levels of reflection in their visits showed greater reductions in their reported loneliness. This may further suggest that the decreases in loneliness reported by the social connection condition were driven by the changes in levels of reflection across the gallery visits, potentially indicating that through the series of art experiences participants were able to reaffirm or shift their worldviews in ways that alleviated loneliness (Tay et al., 2018).

Interestingly, we did not see evidence for immersion playing a significant role in changes in the outcomes examined here. In the RAISE mechanism model (Shim et al., 2019; Tay et al., 2018; Thapa et al., 2023), five qualities of arts engagement (i.e., reflection, acquisition, immersion, socialization, and expression) are proposed that serve as mechanisms in the relationship between engaging with the arts and flourishing outcomes. Of these mechanisms, immersion is proposed as a gateway mechanism that facilitates the experience of the other mechanisms. Prior research has found immersion to be related to changes in both emotions and well-being (Cotter et al., 2022; Cotter, Alyps, et al., 2024; Cotter, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, et al., 2024) but here we did not see any such associations with change in the empathy or social well-being outcomes. It is possible that given the nature of the experimental conditions (i.e., focusing on considering alternate perspectives, thinking about personal relationships, examining specific technical features of artworks), immersion did not make contributions to changes in the outcomes that were distinct from those of reflection. Future research should further examine the interplay between reflective and immersive experiences and their differential effects on flourishing outcomes.

Finally, we also examined depression, stress/anxiety, and overall distress as secondary outcomes. For these outcomes, we did not observe any differences between the conditions or changes across time. This was a short-term 5-week study, and therapeutic interventions typically take several months for significant improvements in mood, anxiety, and distress to be made (Brenes et al., 2015). In addition, each participant's self-report of mood, stress, and impairment using the rating scales requires the use of more subjective and less reliable data than a more objective clinical assessment done by a licensed clinical mental health professional (Uher et al., 2012).

In the present research, we examined the ability of two art viewing interventions—perspective taking and social connection—to impact empathy and social well-being. Although the specific conditions did not show post-test increases in their respective outcomes, both experimental conditions did increase levels of reflection, a mechanism theorized to underly connections between art engagement and flourishing. Further, we observed reductions in loneliness immediately following the art viewing sessions in those who were more reflective during their art viewing and in those in the social connection condition. This research provides the first empirical support for the mechanism of reflection playing a role in cultivating flourishing and provides several potential paths for future research to build on this work, including exploring other interventions targeting specific flourishing outcomes and additional examination of the RAISE mechanisms.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-art-10.1177_02762374241309878 - Supplemental material for Examining the Ability of Digital Visual Art Engagement to Cultivate Empathy and Social Connection

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-art-10.1177_02762374241309878 for Examining the Ability of Digital Visual Art Engagement to Cultivate Empathy and Social Connection by Katherine N. Cotter, Christa T. Mahlobo, Brittany Smith, Suzannah Niepold, Adam Rizzo and James O. Pawelski in Empirical Studies of the Arts

Footnotes

Author Note

KNC, CTM, JOP, Humanities and Human Flourishing Project, Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania; BS, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; AR was affiliated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art when participating in this research and is currently affiliated with the Penn Museum.

The authors would like to thank Henry Putney, Grace Barry, and Lillian Coady for their assistance with preparing materials for the project, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art for their collaboration and permission to use works from their collection as part of the virtual gallery.

KNC, CTM, and JOP are members of a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab, supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts (Award#: 1910340-38). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Endowment for the Arts Office of Research & Analysis or the National Endowment for the Arts. The National Endowment for the Arts does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information included in this material and is not responsible for any consequences of its use.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, (grant number 1910340-38).

ORCID iDs

Katherine N. Cotter

James O. Pawelski

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Katherine N. Cotter, PhD, currently serves as an associate director of Research for the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project at the University of Pennsylvania.

Christa T. Mahlobo, PhD, currently is a Penn provost postdoctoral fellow with the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project at the University of Pennsylvania..

Brittany Smith, MD, was a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia during this project.

Suzannah Niepold is an associate director of Student and Educator Engagement at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Adam Rizzo was the coordinator of College and Pre-Professional Programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and currently serves as the school visits manager at the Penn Museum.

James O. Pawelski, PhD, is the director of the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project and also serves as the Director of Education and Professor of Practice at the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

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