Affective dynamics following immersive art in a Chinese context: a secondary analysis of pre-post PANAS data

Immersive and new-media art is increasingly promoted as a low-cost and scalable route to mood improvement, yet most evidence rests on simple pre-post mean comparisons that ignore measurement error, response shift, and individual variability.

This study reports a secondary analysis of a within-subjects dataset in which 30 adults in a Chinese setting completed the full 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) immediately before and after an immersive art exposure, with no missing data. We tested parcel-level longitudinal measurement invariance, fitted random-intercept mixed models, classified individual-level reliable change, estimated effects within a Bayesian framework, and compared the positive-negative affect association before versus after the exposure.

Invariance held at the configural and metric levels, ruling out response shift. Negative affect declined by about three points (b = -3.13, p = 0.013), a small-to-moderate standardized effect (dz = -0.45, 95% CI [-0.96, -0.08]), whereas positive affect did not change reliably (b = 0.63, p = 0.492). Individual-level classification indicated that 30 percent of respondents showed reliable reductions in negative affect. Bayesian estimation gave weak-to-moderate evidence for a reduction in negative affect (BF10 = 3.19) and moderate evidence against change in positive affect (BF01 = 4.40). The association between positive and negative affect was close to zero before the exposure and did not change afterward (Z = -0.27, p = 0.785).

The findings suggest that immersive art primarily dampens negative affect while leaving positive affect and the decoupling of the two dimensions intact. This pattern is compatible with, though not confirmatory of, dialectical accounts of affect in East Asian samples, given the inherent orthogonality of the PANAS scales and the absence of a Western comparison group. Implications for the social and individual bases of aesthetic experience are articulated, emphasizing person-contingent responding and culturally valued calm. Tentative implications for arts-in-health practice are discussed, alongside the limitations of a small single-group design without a control condition or demographic covariates.