Nostalgia
Nostalgia is sentimental view of the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. It is often described as a sort of sad pleasure, in which a person longs for a past, whether real or romaticized, that cannot be recovered. It can also refer to a type of homesickness.
The word nostalgia is a neoclassical compound derived from Greek, consisting of Nostos, a Homeric word meaning "homecoming", and ἄλγος, meaning "pain"; the word was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the early modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, usually described as the "good old days" or the "glory days". There is a predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more positively and the future more negatively. When applied to one's beliefs about a society or institution, this is called declinism, which has been described as "a trick of the mind" and as "an emotional strategy, something comforting to snuggle up to when the present day seems intolerably bleak".
The scientific literature on nostalgia usually refers to nostalgia regarding one's personal life and has mainly studied the effects of nostalgia as induced during these studies. Emotion is a strong provoker of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain. These recollections of one's past are usually important events, people one cares about, and places where one has spent time. Cultural phenomena such as music, movies, television shows, and video games, as well as natural phenomena such as weather and environment can also be strong triggers of nostalgia.Functions
Nostalgia's definition has changed greatly over time. Consistent with its Greek word roots meaning "homecoming" and "pain", nostalgia was for centuries considered a potentially debilitating and sometimes fatal medical condition characterized by expressing extreme homesickness. The modern view is that nostalgia is an independent, and even positive, emotion that many people experience often. Nostalgia has been found to have important psychological functions, such as to improve mood, increase social connectedness, enhance positive self-regard, and provide existential meaning. Nostalgia can lead individuals to perceive the past more favorably than the present, a phenomenon known as the 'nostalgia effect,' which is classified as a cognitive bias. Many nostalgic reflections serve more than one function, and overall seem to benefit those who experience them. Such benefits may lead to a chronic disposition or personality trait of "nostalgia proneness." Nostalgia has also been associated with learning and memory consolidation.Improving mood
Although nostalgia is often triggered by negative feelings, it results in increasing one's mood and heightening positive emotions, which can stem from feelings of warmth or coping resulting from nostalgic reflections. One way to improve mood is to effectively cope with problems that hinder one's happiness. Batcho found that nostalgia proneness positively related to successful methods of coping throughout all stages—planning and implementing strategies, and reframing the issue positively. These studies led to the conclusion that the coping strategies that are likely among nostalgia-prone people often lead to benefits during stressful times. Nostalgia can be connected to more focus on coping strategies and implementing them, thus increasing support in challenging times.Increasing social connectedness
Nostalgia sometimes involves memories of people one was close to, such as family members, romantic lovers, or friends, and thus it can increase one's sense of social support and connections. Nostalgia is also triggered specifically by feelings of loneliness, but counteracts such feelings with reflections of close relationships. According to Zhou et al., lonely people often have lesser perceptions of social support. Loneliness, however, leads to nostalgia, which actually increases perceptions of social support. Thus, Zhou and colleagues concluded that nostalgia serves a restorative function for individuals regarding their social connectedness.Nostalgia serves as a motivator for the preservation of people's cultural heritage. People endeavor to conserve buildings, landscapes, and other artifacts of historical significance out of nostalgia for past times. They are often motivated by a desire to connect to their heritage from past generations. This can manifest in living history events such as historical reenactments, which bring together people with a shared nostalgia for historical periods of past times. These events' hands-on, improvisational natures often facilitate socialization.Enhancing positive self-regard
Nostalgia serves as a coping mechanism and helps people to feel better about themselves. Vess et al. found that the subjects who thought of nostalgic memories showed greater accessibility of positive characteristics than those who thought of exciting future experiences. Additionally, in a second study conducted, some participants were exposed to nostalgic engagement and reflection while the other group was not. The researchers looked again at self-attributes and found that the participants who were not exposed to nostalgic experiences reflected a pattern of selfish and self-centered attributes. Vess et al., however, found that this effect had weakened and become less powerful among the participants who engaged in nostalgic reflection.Providing existential meaning
Nostalgia helps increase one's self-esteem and meaning in life by buffering threats to well-being and also by initiating a desire to deal with problems or stress. Routledge and colleagues found that nostalgia correlates positively with one's sense of meaning in life. The second study revealed that nostalgia increases one's perceived meaning in life, which was thought to be mediated by a sense of social support or connectedness. Thirdly, the researchers found that threatened meaning can even act as a trigger for nostalgia, thus increasing one's nostalgic reflections. By triggering nostalgia, though, one's defensiveness to such threat is minimized as found in the fourth study. The final two studies found that nostalgia is able to not only create meaning but buffer threats to meaning by breaking the connection between a lack of meaning and one's well-being. Follow-up studies also completed by Routledge in 2012 not only found meaning as a function of nostalgia, but also concluded that nostalgic people have greater perceived meaning, search for meaning less, and can better buffer existential threat.Promoting psychological growth
Nostalgia makes people more willing to engage in growth-oriented behaviors and encourages them to view themselves as growth-oriented people. Baldwin & Landau found that nostalgia leads people to rate themselves higher on items like "I am the kind of person who embraces unfamiliar people, events, and places." Nostalgia also increased interest in growth-related behavior such as "I would like to explore someplace that I have never been before." In the first study, these effects were statistically mediated by nostalgia-induced positive affect—the extent to which nostalgia made participants feel good. In the second study, nostalgia led to the same growth outcomes but the effects were statistically mediated by nostalgia-induced self-esteem.As a deception
One recent study critiques the idea of nostalgia, which in some forms can become a defense mechanism by which people avoid the historical facts. This study looked at the different portrayals of apartheid in South Africa and argued that nostalgia appears as two ways, 'restorative nostalgia' a wish to return to that past, and 'reflective nostalgia' which is more critically aware.As a comfort
Reliving past memories may provide comfort and contribute to mental health. One notable recent medical study has looked at the physiological effects thinking about past 'good' memories can have. They found that thinking about the past 'fondly' actually increased perceptions of physical warmth.Research suggests that nostalgia becomes more prominent during periods of rapid social, cultural, or technological change. Scholars argue that accelerated change can produce feelings of uncertainty and dislocation, leading individuals and groups to engage nostalgically with the past as a way of restoring a sense of continuity and stability. In this context, nostalgia functions as a psychological and cultural response to perceived disruption rather than a simple desire to return to earlier times.Reflective and restorative nostalgia
Cultural theorist Svetlana Boym distinguishes between two forms of nostalgia: restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. Restorative nostalgia emphasizes *nóstos* and seeks to reconstruct an idealized past as if it could be recovered in the present. Reflective nostalgia, by contrast, focuses on *algia*, acknowledging the passage of time and engaging critically with memory rather than attempting a literal return to the past. This distinction highlights different ways individuals and societies relate to history and loss.As a political tool
In a 2014 study conducted by Routledge, he and a team observed that the more people reported having major disruptions and uncertainties in their lives, the more they nostalgically longed for the past. Routledge suggests that by invoking the idea of an idealized past, politicians can provoke the social and cultural anxieties and uncertainties that make nostalgia especially attractive—and effective—as a tool of political persuasion.