Trait nostalgia

Abstract

We define trait nostalgia as the proclivity to bring to mind, and reflect wistfully upon, fond and meaningful experiences from one’s personal past. The affective structure of nostalgic experiences is blended, but predominantly positive. Their content is acutely social, and their trajectory is redemptive rather than contaminative. Further, nostalgic experiences are appraised as pleasant, entailing irretrievable loss, being unique and distant, and being approach-oriented, positive, and low arousal. Valid scales designed to assess trait nostalgia are highly correlated (showing convergent validity), and nostalgia emerges as a latent variable in relevant confirmatory factor analysis, while evincing moderate rank-order stability. Moreover, nostalgia is distinct from other past-oriented traits or trait-like modes of thinking about one’s past (i.e., homesickness, life longing, rumination, counterfactual thinking, reminiscence, autobiographical memory). Lastly, nostalgia is associated with or conduces to psychological benefits such as viewing the past and future positively (bearing motivational consequences), feeling imbued with sociality and behaving prosocially, and enjoying psychological well-being, while it buffers against adversity (e.g., losses in meaning, sociality, and psychological well-being). Trait nostalgia is rich in emotional content, distinct, stable, and functional.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

ORCID for Tim Wildschut: orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487

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