Conducted by a joint team of psychologists from the University of Southern California, Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, the research is the first extensive investigation examining how taking photos affects people’s enjoyment of their experiences.
“We show that, relative to not taking photos, photography can heighten enjoyment of positive experiences by increasing engagement,” wrote study co-authors Kristin Diehl, Gal Zauberman and Alixandra Barasch in an article published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The researchers outlined a series of nine experiments involving over 2,000 participants in the field and the lab designed to examine the effect of taking photographs of an experience on people’s enjoyment of an activity.
In each experiment, individuals were asked to participate in an activity and were either instructed to take photos during the activity or not.
Afterward, participants completed a survey designed to measure not only their enjoyment but their engagement in the experience. In almost every case, people who took photographs reported higher levels of enjoyment.
“One critical factor that has been shown to affect enjoyment is the extent to which people are engaged with the experience,” the authors wrote. Photo-taking naturally draws people more into the experience, they found.
In one experiment, individuals were instructed to take a self-guided tour of a museum exhibit while wearing glasses that tracked their eye movements.
The researchers found that those who took photos spent more time examining the artefacts in the exhibit than those who simply observed.
There were some conditions, though, where picture-taking did not have a positive effect, such as when the participant was already actively engaged in the experience.
For example, in one experiment, individuals were asked either to participate in an arts and crafts project or to observe one. While taking photos increased the enjoyment of observers, it did not affect enjoyment of those actively taking part in the experience.
Another instance where photo-taking did not appear to increase enjoyment was when taking photos interfered with the experience itself, such as having to handle bulky and unwieldy camera equipment.