Museum scripts: An example of the application of social cognitive research to tourism

Abstract

Museums are becoming major tourist attractions, and as tourists increasingly seek educational value in their travel there is increasing pressure on museums to provide effective educational experiences. There is already a long tradition of psychological research in museums. This work has been concerned firstly with the use of museums as nonlaboratory settings to investigate cognitive concepts and theories, and secondly to provide information for the better design of exhibits and museums. A model to describe the museum visit and predict visitor behaviour and cognition is presented. This model is based on Langer's mindfulness/mindlessness concept The approach described here predicts that the script for a museum visit is not likely to include elements concerned with learning or processing information, defined as MBUTLD or MTRANS elements (Schank & Abelson, 1977). The present study examined the descriptions of a museum visit by 348 subjects in order to analyse museum script content. The results indicated that the museum script included few MBUILD or MTRANS elements thus providing support for the mindfulness/mindlessness model of a museum visit. Furthermore, the study provided evidence that scripts differ according to whether respondents have direct or vicarious experience of the situation. A number of practical implications of the results for museum professionals and educators were outlined.