Combining culture and cortisol – Is art good for our health?

Writer’s note: This article has been co-written by Courtney Worrell and Tony Woods

It has long been said that art is good for our health, but we didn’t know much about how or why. So, this summer, we set up shop in front of the likes of Van Gogh and Manet at the Courtauld Gallery in London to look at the science behind this relationship and explore how the body really responds to viewing art.

Spoiler alert – what we found was very, very interesting.  

Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889), courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery

Anecdotal accounts saying that art is good for boosting wellbeing and reducing stress, for a long time, have remained just that - anecdotal. However, in the last few years, scientists have begun to explore this to finally answer the question of what impact art can really have. For instance, previous studies have shown that regularly visiting galleries and museums can enhance wellbeing and mental health. A more recent but unpublished study has also shown that viewing original artworks led to stronger emotional responses in the brain, compared with viewing reprints.

Our Study

As Programme Managers in the Stress, Psychiatry, and Immunology (SPI) Lab at King's College London, we have recently built on this to run a new study exploring art and health. In our study, we were particularly interested in exploring whether viewing a genuine masterpiece in a gallery setting had different effects from viewing a reproduction in a laboratory setting, focusing on the different ways the body might respond.

Due to our study design (comparing original vs reproductions), we had to be pretty selective in the art we chose. For obvious security reasons, it wasn’t possible to hoist world-renowned artworks off the gallery wall, and so we curated a selection of artworks the Courtauld Gallery were able to kindly lend us high-quality reproductions of. The reproductions were so accurate that we occasionally received some quizzical looks from passers-by as we carried them out of the building.

The artworks and their corresponding reproductions were:

1. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge (c1892)

2. Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

3. Édouard Manet’s Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil (1874)

4. Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

5. Paul Gaugin’s Te Rerioa (The Dream) (1897)

   
   

We recruited 50 participants who were aged 18-40 years old and hadn’t visited a gallery in the last 30 days. Participants were then divided into two groups: 25 viewed the masterpieces in the Courtauld Gallery (during opening hours), and 25 viewed the reproductions in a laboratory setting.

When it came to data collection, we first asked all participants to complete a short emotional intelligence questionnaire and provide samples of their saliva. We then asked them to wear a watch while viewing each of the 5 artworks, in order, for 3 minutes each. These watches weren’t the usual run-of-the-mill smart watches. In fact, they didn’t even tell the time. What they were doing, however, was collecting thousands of pieces of data on heart rate variability and skin temperature. Finally, after viewing the pieces, we repeated the saliva samples.

From this, we were able to collect large amounts of physiological data from the participants, despite their sessions only being around 20 minutes long. Here is what we found.

Édouard Manet’s Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil (1874), courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery

Heart Rate Variability and Skin Temperature

Heart rate variability (HRV), the tiny changes in the time between heartbeats, can tell us interesting things about our autonomic nervous system (a system which controls our involuntary actions, such as breathing and heart rate). In this system, we have a balance between a sympathetic nervous system (otherwise known as ‘fight or flight’), preparing us to deal with a stressor, and the parasympathetic nervous system (‘rest and digest’), which is more about slowing down and aiding recovery. A higher HRV usually means your body is momentarily flexible and adaptable, better prepared to handle stress. On the other hand, a lower HRV can indicate that the body is under stress or less resilient.

When we looked at the data from our participants, we found that those who viewed the original artworks had greater variation in HRV than those who viewed the reproductions. This suggests that their autonomic nervous systems were more engaged, and interestingly, their heart rates were, on average, a little faster than the reprint group’s.

Similarly to HRV, for skin temperature, we were also looking at differences when viewing the different types of artworks. Again, the participants viewing the original artworks had bigger dips in their skin temperature, which is thought to indicate bursts of emotional arousal. It is worth noting, however, that the overall trends were more similar between the groups here.

Cortisol and Cytokines

The saliva samples we collected were used to explore two things: cortisol and cytokines.

Cortisol is a stress hormone produced in response to a stressor, helping our bodies prepare to handle it. Our analyses showed that participants viewing the original artworks in the gallery had a reduction of cortisol after looking at the art, suggesting that it had a stress-reducing or restorative effect. We weren’t able to find the same result in the participants who viewed the reproductions.

In saliva, we are also able to measure what we call 'cytokines' – proteins produced by immune cells. We found that IL-6 and TNF-α, which are two pro-inflammatory cytokines which drive inflammation (essentially activation of the immune system), were significantly reduced in the participants in the gallery after viewing original artworks, compared to the participants who viewed reproductions. On the other hand, other cytokines that we measured (IL-1β and IL-8) didn’t change significantly for either group of participants. This is particularly interesting as it hints that there may be an activation of specific pathways of inflammation which are sensitive to stress.

Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery

Emotional Intelligence

And let’s not forget that emotional intelligence questionnaire. We asked participants to complete this so that we could find out if there were any patterns between the responses to the art and certain personality traits. We couldn’t find anything significant here, and this is actually quite a positive finding. It suggests that the physiological effects we observed from viewing art aren’t limited to a specific group, but could potentially be experienced by everyone.

Final Thoughts

So, altogether, we found that viewing the original artworks in a gallery had a stronger effect on the body than looking at reproductions. More specifically, those viewing the original works showed a significant reduction in stress hormone levels, more variation in their heartbeat patterns, and brief drops in skin temperature. We think that this combination points to both emotional arousal and deep relaxation when it comes to viewing original artwork in a gallery.

We have written this research up in a paper, which is currently available as a preprint and will soon be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. With exciting news coverage received from our results today from the likes of the BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, The Times and more, it is fair to say that we are both pretty chuffed with the outcome, and we can’t wait to put together another study to combine the worlds of science and art yet again.

This research was done with the support and hospitality of the Psychiatry Research Trust, ArtFund, and the Courtauld Gallery. And of course, a special thanks to our wonderful participants and research team.