Does Priming Improve Visitor Experience? Evidence from a Museum-Based Study

Priming — exposure to a stimulus that influences responses to a subsequent, related stimulus — has been widely studied in laboratory settings but rarely examined in ecological cultural contexts such as museums. This exploratory study investigated whether different priming modalities influence museum experiences across learning, affect, and pro-environmental attitudes. At the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, 161 visitors were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: visual, semantic, visuo-semantic priming or a no priming control condition. One-way ANOVA revealed no overall effect of priming condition on learning; however, exploratory pairwise comparisons indicated that the visuo-semantic condition produced higher learning scores than the visual condition alone (Cohen's d = 0.54, 95% CI [0.13, 0.95]). Unexpectedly, the control condition reported higher recycling intentions and intrinsic motivation than the visual priming condition. Overall, the findings suggest selective differences between priming modalities and underscore both the potential and the limits of applying cognitive principles in cultural settings.