It is not yet clear how nostalgia achieves the wide-ranging benefits on wellbeing documented by research. Much of the research favorable to nostalgia has employed experimental and quantitative methods within a laboratory setting. Literature and memoir offer a wider range of content for exploration into the complexity of nostalgia. Literature, memoir, and laboratory research have all illustrated the role of nostalgia in sustaining meaning, identity, and social connectedness. However, initial insights from this appraisal suggest a stronger emphasis in literary forms on the role of nostalgia in resolving conflict and coping with change and loss. Literary forms supplement laboratory efforts by providing a greater diversity of life experience and reflections that can yield more integrative syntheses over time.

The utterly un-nostalgic person is probably a non-existent being. At both a personal and collective level, we explore how nostalgia is experienced and in demand during times of transition, disjuncture, conflict and uncertainty. This chapter explores the emotion of nostalgia and connects it specifically to the current corona pandemic – the challenges of lockdowns and social distancing measures on interaction, feelings of loneliness and a generalised sense of uncertainty and despair, and also a rise of nostalgia as a possible response to these challenges. The predominant view of nostalgia put forth in this chapter is that nostalgia has the capacity to provide a great deal of benefit (meaning, hope, direction and purpose) to individuals, groups, institutions and societies at large. Indeed, nostalgia can be a tranquil feeling in a fearful world. We relate nostalgia to studies and experiences from the pandemic period and speculate on how the so-called ‘corona crisis’ may impact feelings of nostalgia in the post-pandemic world – perhaps even a nostalgia and longing for the pandemic period itself.If the corona pandemic has in fact sparked a new (or renewed) interest in nostalgia in contemporary society due to the corona pandemic, it may indeed prove to be a positive thing, particularly if it makes it easier for people to deal with current feelings of adversity and anxiety. We suggest the nostalgia mood that is generated and perpetuated by the continuing twists and turns of the corona pandemic may – in the short and long run – prove useful in coping with and giving meaning to the problems and perplexing circumstances of life, rather than being a regressive phenomenon. Perhaps, something good may, in the end, grow from something bad?

What helps consumers extract the greatest happiness from their experiences? The current investigation is the first to introduce to the consumer literature the construct of anticipatory nostalgia, defined as missing aspects of the present before they vanish in the future. While personal nostalgia involves fond memories and longing for what has already been lost, anticipatory nostalgia involves missing what has not yet been lost. In four studies, we show that marketing communications can elicit anticipatory nostalgia, and this emotion can either enhance or reduce consumer enjoyment of the experience, depending on the experience valence or the individual's level of life satisfaction. Specifically, mediated by anxiety, anticipatory nostalgia decreased enjoyment and positive affect in pleasant situations, but it enhanced enjoyment and affect in unpleasant circumstances. Study 4 extended the paradigm to a real-life setting and showed that the impact of anticipatory nostalgia on enjoyment and meaningfulness can last as long as 8 h after the manipulation.

Contemporary research has showcased many benefits of nostalgia, but its bittersweet character and historical reputation as unhealthy raise the possibility of less favorable impacts. In recent studies, daily diary data highlighted nostalgia’s mixed valence and suggested that nostalgia is more strongly associated with negative feelings. Variables that influence the adaptive or maladaptive dimensions of nostalgia have not yet been fully explored. Recently, a focus on when nostalgia is experienced relative to past and future was introduced in the construct of anticipatory nostalgia, missing the present prematurely before it has become past. Distinct from personal nostalgia, anticipatory nostalgia was found to be characterized by difficulty enjoying the present and a tendency toward sadness and worry. The present study examines the distinctive dynamics at play in anticipatory and personal nostalgia by exploring the relationship between each type of dispositional nostalgia and reported experience with happy and sad stories. The Nostalgia Inventory, the Survey of Anticipatory Nostalgia, and a brief form of the PANAS were completed by 144 undergraduates (110 women), who rated their exposure and reactions to happy and sad stories. Reported frequency of exposure to happy and sad stories was related to dispositional happiness and sadness. Personal and anticipatory nostalgia did not differ in frequency of exposure to happy and sad stories, but they did differ in reactivity to and learning from sad stories. Findings highlight the importance of the timing of nostalgia, consistent with the distinction between nostalgia for the past and nostalgia for what is still present.

The role of personal nostalgia in inspiring and sustaining resistance in the Ukraine during World War II was explored in narrative analysis of three memoirs. Common themes identified in the memoirs were compared to findings of current empirical psychological research. Nostalgia fortified the resistance by strengthening cultural identity, social bonds, attachment to home, and continuity of self. Nostalgic memories counteracted loneliness and supported cognitive-emotional coping during and after the struggle. Integration of present and past was instrumental in accepting personal growth in a new homeland. Findings shed light on the interaction between individual and social identity, the relationship between personal and historical nostalgia, and the distinction between healthy and maladaptive nostalgia.

Four studies explored anticipatory nostalgia—missing aspects of the present before they are lost in the future—and its relationship to personal nostalgia. In Study 1, 147 undergraduates completed the new Survey of Anticipatory Nostalgia and the Nostalgia Inventory, an established measure of personal nostalgia—longing for one's remembered past. Study 2 examined the relationship of each type of nostalgia to tendencies to happiness and sadness and to dispositional measures of social assurance, need to belong and resilience. In Study 3, 123 undergraduates reacted to hypothetical situations, judged the general tendency of people and events to make them happy, sad, or worried, and wrote an essay from one of three time perspectives. Study 4 extended these findings to a solitary neutral task rating photographs and examined the relationship between nostalgia and childhood happiness. The new survey demonstrated acceptable internal and test–retest reliability and a moderate correlation with personal nostalgia. Personal nostalgia was related to remembering the past, favorable affect and reactions, whereas anticipatory nostalgia was aligned with thinking of the future, emotional distancing, difficulty enjoying the present, and a greater tendency to sadness and worry.

The relationship between nostalgia and coping during difficult times was explored in 2 empirical studies. In the first, 80 undergraduates, 60 women and 20 men, completed the Nostalgia Inventory, a measure of nostalgia proneness, the COPE Inventory, a dispositional measure of strategies for coping with stressful events, and the Childhood Survey, a survey of impressions of childhood experiences. Nostalgia proneness correlated with use of adaptive coping, including emotional social support, expressing emotions, turning to religion, and suppressing competing activities, and did not correlate with escapist or avoidance strategies, including denial, behavioral disengagement, and substance abuse. Nostalgia proneness was related positively to favorable emotional and behavioral childhood experiences and did not correlate with adverse experiences. Favorable impressions of childhood correlated positively with adaptive coping strategies and inversely with dysfunctional ones, whereas unfavorable childhood experiences correlated positively with dysfunctional coping. Regression analyses suggested that the relationship between nostalgia proneness and certain coping strategies may be mediated in part by childhood experiences. In a second study, 100 undergraduates, 86 women and 14 men, completed the Nostalgia Inventory, recalled autobiographical memories that illustrated how childhood is either special or similar to their present life, and rated their likely use of strategies in dealing with 2 hypothetical problems. Nostalgia proneness correlated with emotional and instrumental social coping and with the goal-directed strategies of planning, taking action, and positive reframing. Further research is recommended to explore the role of childhood memories in coping and to identify mechanisms that mediate the relationship between nostalgia and coping.

The concept of nostalgia has changed substantially both denotatively and connotatively over the span of its 300-year history. This article traces the evolution of the concept from its origins as a medical disease to its contemporary understanding as a psychological construct. The difficulty of tracing a construct through history is highlighted. Attention is paid to roles played first by the medical context, and then by the psychiatric, psychoanalytic, and psychological approaches. Emphasis is given to shifts in the designation of nostalgic valence from bitter to sweet to bittersweet, and the processes of semantic drift and depathologization are explored. Because the sense of nostalgia was constructed and reconstructed within social, cultural, and historical contexts, its meaning changed along with the words used to describe and connect it to other entities. Nostalgia's past illustrates the influence of language, social-cultural context, and discipline perspectives on how a construct is defined, researched, and applied. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study introduces a balanced survey of a range of behavioral and emotional experiences to assess impressions of a person’s childhood. Ninety-one undergraduates and 70 of their parents rated exposure to positive and negative social and solitary experiences. The survey demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and 4-week test–retest reliability, and scores correlated with Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory of temporally based beliefs and values, Batcho’s inventory of personal nostalgia, and Holbrook’s measure of historical nostalgia. Correlations with time perspective and nostalgia inventories suggest that favorable impressions of childhood are associated with benefits such as social connectedness, personal continuity, and health-promoting behaviors and adverse impressions with less adaptive impacts such as unsatisfactory relationships, discontinuity, and distress. Ratings of social experiences were correlated more closely with childhood happiness than were solitary experiences. The Childhood Survey shows promise as a tool to expand the exploration of childhood experiences beyond adverse events to encompass components that comprise a happy childhood.

The content of original song lyrics was manipulated to explore the relationship of nostalgia to identity and social connectedness. A sample of 96 undergraduates rated six attributes of four sets of lyrics and completed measures of identity exploration, styles of maintaining identity, nostalgia for t

Emotion and topic were manipulated in original song lyrics. Participants completed Batcho's and Holbrook's nostalgia surveys and rated 6 sets of lyrics for happiness, sadness, anger, nostalgia, meaning, liking, and relevance. Nostalgic lyrics were characterized by bittersweet reverie, loss of the past, identity, and meaning. Contrary to theories linking nostalgia to pathology, participants who scored high on Batcho's measure of personal nostalgia preferred happy lyrics, found them more meaningful, and related more closely to them. Consistent with theories relating nostalgia to social connectedness, high-nostalgia respondents preferred other-directed to solitary themes. Historical nostalgia was associated with relating more closely to sad lyrics.

Batcho's 1995 Nostalgia Inventory was completed by 210 respondents, 88 males and 122 females, ranging in age from 5 to 79 years old. Subjects scoring high on the Nostalgia Inventory rated the past more favorably than did subjects scoring low on the inventory but did not differ in ratings of the present or future. High-scoring individuals rated themselves more emotional, with stronger memories, need for achievement, and preference for activities with other people, but not as less happy, risk or thrill seeking, religious, logical, easily bored, or expecting to succeed. In a second study, 113 undergraduates, 32 men and 81 women, completed measures of nostalgia, memory, and personality. High-scoring subjects showed no advantage in free recall over low-scoring subjects but recalled more people-oriented autobiographical memories. Individuals scoring high on nostalgia were no more optimistic, pessimistic, or negatively emotional but scored higher on a measure of emotional intensity. Personal nostalgia was distinguished from social-historical nostalgia and world view. Results were discussed with respect to major theoretical approaches.

A survey was designed to assess nostalgia for 20 aspects of experience as well as relative judgments of the world past, present, and future. Surveys were completed by 648 respondents, 268 males and 380 females, ranging in age from 4 to 80 years old. Split-half reliability was .78. Test-retest reliability over a 1-wk. interval on a separate sample of 50 respondents was .84. Nostalgia was related to the judgment of the past relative to the present. Gender differences were not significant, but significant differences across age groups were obtained for most items. The intensity of nostalgic sentiment varied across objects, situations, aspects of society, and people. Factor analysis suggested that nostalgia is comprised of a number of factors reflecting different spheres and levels of experience. For nostalgia, conceptualized as a multifaceted, composite construct, results were discussed with respect to four approaches--generational, developmental, personality, and transient mood state. Suggestions were made for further development of the survey and for research exploring relationships among nostalgia, motivation, emotion, and behavior.