Research assistant from the IRMO Department for Culture and Communication and PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, Marta Šveb Dragija, along with Prof. Dr. Nina Hansen and Prof. Dr. Martijn van Zomeren, published an article titled Anticipating a Museum Visit: The Role of Museum Design in Anticipating Hedonic or Eudaimonic Well-Being Experiences in the Community & Applied Social Psychology journal, which is indexed in the bibliographic databases Scopus and Web of Science.
In three social-psychological experiments with Croatian and American participants, the authors explored how the description of museum design influences visitors’ expectations of well-being and emotional experiences. The findings revealed a clear distinction between anticipated eudaimonic and hedonic experiences. Eudaimonic museum design, in addition to evoking positive emotions, prompted complex emotional reactions such as compassion, awe, sadness, and guilt, while hedonically designed museums encouraged feelings of pleasure and relaxation. These results emphasize the importance of describing museum design to potential visitors to better shape their expectations, which has significant implications for contemporary theories of well-being and emotions, as well as for museum presentation practices.
The full article is available at the following link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/casp.70025
