Music-evoked nostalgia: Affect, memory, and personality.

TLDR

Participants listened to randomly selected popular music excerpts and rated how nostalgic each song made them feel. Nostalgia was stronger for autobiographically salient, arousing, familiar songs that evoked many emotions, and this effect was moderated by individual differences such as nostalgia proneness, mood, and personality traits; nostalgia proneness itself was linked to sadness and neuroticism, and nostalgic experiences were associated with both joy and sadness, whereas nonnostalgic ones were linked to irritation.

Abstract

Participants listened to randomly selected excerpts of popular music and rated how nostalgic each song made them feel. Nostalgia was stronger to the extent that a song was autobiographically salient, arousing, familiar, and elicited a greater number of positive, negative, and mixed emotions. These effects were moderated by individual differences (nostalgia proneness, mood state, dimensions of the Affective Neurosciences Personality Scale, and factors of the Big Five Inventory). Nostalgia proneness predicted stronger nostalgic experiences, even after controlling for other individual difference measures. Nostalgia proneness was predicted by the Sadness dimension of the Affective Neurosciences Personality Scale and Neuroticism of the Big Five Inventory. Nostalgia was associated with both joy and sadness, whereas nonnostalgic and nonautobiographical experiences were associated with irritation.