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To nostalgize: mixing memory with affect and desire

To nostalgize: mixing memory with affect and desire
To nostalgize: mixing memory with affect and desire
Nostalgia is a self-conscious, bittersweet but predominantly positive and fundamentally social emotion. It arises from fond memories mixed with yearning about one's childhood, close relationships, or atypically positive events, and it entails a redemption trajectory. It is triggered by a variety of external stimuli or internal states, is prevalent, is universal, and is experienced across ages. Nostalgia serves a self-oriented function (by raising self-positivity and facilitating perceptions of a positive future), an existential function (by increasing perceptions of life as meaningful), and a sociality function (by increasing social connectedness, reinforcing socially oriented action tendencies, and promoting prosocial behavior). These functions are independent of the positive affect that nostalgia may incite. Also, nostalgia-elicited sociality often mediates the self-positivity and existential functions. In addition, nostalgia maintains psychological and physiological homeostasis along the following regulatory cycle: (i) Noxious stimuli, as general as avoidance motivation and as specific as self-threat (negative performance feedback), existential threat (meaninglessness, mortality awareness), social threat (loneliness, social exclusion), well-being threat (stress, boredom), or, perhaps surprisingly, physical coldness intensify felt nostalgia; (ii) in turn, nostalgia (measured or manipulated) alleviates the impact of threat by curtailing the influence of avoidance motivation on approach motivation, buttressing the self from threat, limiting defensive responding to meaninglessness, assuaging existential anxiety, repairing interpersonal isolation, diminishing the blow of stress, relieving boredom through meaning reestablishment, or producing the sensation of physical warmth. Nostalgia has a checkered history, but is now rehabilitated as an adaptive psychological resource.
nostalgia, emotions, self-conscious emotions, self-positivity, self-esteem, meaning in life, social connectedness, prosocial behavior, well-being, psychological homeostasis, physiological homeostasis
0065-2601
189-273
Sedikides, Constantine
9d45e66d-75bb-44de-87d7-21fd553812c2
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Routledge, Clay
c1e0088a-3cc4-4d54-bbd3-de7d286429d8
Arndt, Jamie
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Hepper, Erica G.
fe969931-cea2-4781-a474-d41a89b213ae
Zhou, Xinyue
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Sedikides, Constantine
9d45e66d-75bb-44de-87d7-21fd553812c2
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Routledge, Clay
c1e0088a-3cc4-4d54-bbd3-de7d286429d8
Arndt, Jamie
9f74041c-58f9-43b5-96f1-19dda49b7d87
Hepper, Erica G.
fe969931-cea2-4781-a474-d41a89b213ae
Zhou, Xinyue
71499fe7-f78c-4787-939a-df0ce0efeb92

Sedikides, Constantine, Wildschut, Tim, Routledge, Clay, Arndt, Jamie, Hepper, Erica G. and Zhou, Xinyue (2015) To nostalgize: mixing memory with affect and desire. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 189-273. (doi:10.1016/bs.aesp.2014.10.001).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Nostalgia is a self-conscious, bittersweet but predominantly positive and fundamentally social emotion. It arises from fond memories mixed with yearning about one's childhood, close relationships, or atypically positive events, and it entails a redemption trajectory. It is triggered by a variety of external stimuli or internal states, is prevalent, is universal, and is experienced across ages. Nostalgia serves a self-oriented function (by raising self-positivity and facilitating perceptions of a positive future), an existential function (by increasing perceptions of life as meaningful), and a sociality function (by increasing social connectedness, reinforcing socially oriented action tendencies, and promoting prosocial behavior). These functions are independent of the positive affect that nostalgia may incite. Also, nostalgia-elicited sociality often mediates the self-positivity and existential functions. In addition, nostalgia maintains psychological and physiological homeostasis along the following regulatory cycle: (i) Noxious stimuli, as general as avoidance motivation and as specific as self-threat (negative performance feedback), existential threat (meaninglessness, mortality awareness), social threat (loneliness, social exclusion), well-being threat (stress, boredom), or, perhaps surprisingly, physical coldness intensify felt nostalgia; (ii) in turn, nostalgia (measured or manipulated) alleviates the impact of threat by curtailing the influence of avoidance motivation on approach motivation, buttressing the self from threat, limiting defensive responding to meaninglessness, assuaging existential anxiety, repairing interpersonal isolation, diminishing the blow of stress, relieving boredom through meaning reestablishment, or producing the sensation of physical warmth. Nostalgia has a checkered history, but is now rehabilitated as an adaptive psychological resource.

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Published date: 2015
Keywords: nostalgia, emotions, self-conscious emotions, self-positivity, self-esteem, meaning in life, social connectedness, prosocial behavior, well-being, psychological homeostasis, physiological homeostasis

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 373360
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/373360
ISSN: 0065-2601
PURE UUID: d782d4d6-35b2-4883-a59d-26f68953cef7
ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X
ORCID for Tim Wildschut: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487

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Date deposited: 15 Jan 2015 17:14
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:10

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Contributors

Author: Tim Wildschut ORCID iD
Author: Clay Routledge
Author: Jamie Arndt
Author: Erica G. Hepper
Author: Xinyue Zhou

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