Do you want to raise kind and generous children? Take them to the art museum!
It turns out that the sense of wonder inspired by great art can be a humbling experience that encourages kids to help others, rather than focus on their own needs.
“During encounters with vast mysteries, fear makes individuals feel small, humble, and less authoritative, thereby shifting their attention to the needs and concerns of others rather than themselves,” reads a news item. study. Psychological Sciences.
Lead author Eftychia Stamkou, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, decided to study the effects of wonder on children after realizing that the feeling had been extensively studied in adults, where it led to less self-righteousness and greater generosity. Stamkou’s study, which included 159 volunteers aged 8 to 13, suggests the results are about the same for children, reports Inc..
Participants watched short film clips designed to elicit either joy, admiration, or a neutral response – the wine drinking scene of Fancyan extract of song of the sea in which a character turns into a seal, and an instructional video on painting walls or making coffee, respectively.
A child looks at a giant rabbit lantern at the National Museum of Arts and Crafts of China and the Museum of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China ahead of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit, on January 14, 2023 in Beijing, China . Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images.
The researchers then asked the children to complete an easy but tedious task of counting the items for a food drive for families in need, or, instead, if they would be willing to donate the museum tickets to art or chocolate snacks they were supposed to receive for taking part in the study to a refugee family.
“Kids who watched the awesome video chose to count 50% more items for food collection than kids who watched the happy clip and more than twice as many items as kids who watched the neutral clip. Children in the Awesome condition were also two to three times more likely to donate their college rewards than children in the Happy or Neutral conditions,” said the Association for Psychological Sciences blog reported.
“Fear, an aesthetic and moral emotion, helps societies thrive by making children more generous,” the study says. “Our research is the first to demonstrate that impressive art can elicit prosociality in children.”
A young girl attends the exhibition ‘Pipilotti Rist: Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You’, a new large-scale site-specific installation by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist at the National Museum of Qatar in Doha, November 18, 2022 Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images.
Although the researchers did not use famous paintings or sculptures to evoke admiration in the study, they noted that their findings could help prove that art can provide benefits to society as a whole, not just to the individual.
If impressive art truly encourages people to act more selflessly, it would counteract “the still common perception that art has virtually no real consequences for human behavior because artistic experiences are framed in imaginary worlds. and not real”, read the study. “Our research provides concrete evidence of the behavioral consequences of art on outcomes that promote the well-being of others.”
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