How a Northern Ireland Museum Evokes Emotion Without Changing Minds

📌 The Question

Can museums help heal divided societies—or do they risk reopening old wounds? This study assesses a transitional justice exhibit, Troubles and Beyond at the Ulster Museum, to understand whether museum encounters change how people perceive past violence or prefer it be addressed.

🔍 How the evidence was collected

• Nearly 1,400 participants contributed across three research components:
• Focus groups that explored qualitative reactions to the exhibit;
• A field experiment conducted with visitors at the Troubles and Beyond exhibit in the Ulster Museum;
• A survey experiment that randomly exposed respondents to exhibit materials.

📈 Key Findings

• Exhibit materials provoke strong emotional responses among visitors.
• Those emotional reactions do not translate into measurable shifts in:
• Perceptions of past violent conflict, or
• Preferences for how the conflict should be addressed.
• The lack of attitude change is consistent with the exhibit's balanced curation, which avoids advancing a single interpretive narrative.

💡 Why this matters

Balanced museum curation appears effective at avoiding further polarization in a deeply contested post-conflict setting. However, that same neutrality also constrains the exhibit's ability to foster greater social cohesion or change political perceptions about the past. These results highlight a trade-off facing memorialization efforts in divided societies: preventing inflamed divisions versus actively promoting reconciliation.