The Effect of Authenticity Labelling of Museum Objects on Students’ Psychological State of Interest in Biology Education

Abstract Many natural history museum exhibitions and collections are based on taxidermized animals. These exhibitions are frequently supplemented by replicas, which are visually very similar to the originals and can convey similar information. However, object authenticity seems to play an important role in the visitor museum experience. This study aimed to investigate the effect of authenticity labelling of museum objects on the psychological state of interest of students and whether this influenced their performance on a knowledge test. Two treatment groups viewed identical animal taxidermy specimens; however, these were labelled as "originals" in one group and "replicas" in the other. Thus, the visual information remained constant in both treatments, manipulating only the communicated authenticity status. This quasi-experimental study utilized a pretest-posttest design at a natural history museum in Germany. A total of 122 secondary school students participated in the study (age: M = 13.7 years, SD = 0.86; 48% female). The results indicated no significant difference in interest between the two treatment groups (labelled original vs. labelled replica) during the museum visit. Therefore, the labelled authenticity of the objects was not a determining factor for the development of situational interest in this context. However, we found evidence that the appearance of the objects had an influence on the development of interest. This could explain why there were no differences between the treatment groups, for the appearance of the objects was the same in both conditions.