Finding Meaning in Nostalgia

TLDR

Nostalgia is a self‑relevant, socially embedded emotion that evokes a sentimental longing for the past, bringing the past into present focus with existential implications. The study shows that nostalgia enhances social connectedness and self‑continuity, supports goal pursuit, buffers existential threats such as mortality salience, and improves psychological well‑being—yielding higher vitality, lower stress, and greater equanimity for those with meaning deficits.

Abstract

Nostalgia—defined as sentimental longing for one's past—is a self-relevant, albeit deeply social, and an ambivalent, albeit more positive than negative, emotion. As nostalgia brings the past into present focus, it has existential implications. Nostalgia helps people find meaning in their lives, and it does so primarily by increasing social connectedness (a sense of belongingness and acceptance), and secondarily by augmenting self-continuity (a sense of connection between one's past and one's present). Also, nostalgia-elicited meaning facilitates the pursuit of one's important goals. Moreover, nostalgia acts as a buffer against existential threats. In particular, it shields against meaning threat, and buffers the impact of mortality salience on meaning, collective identity, accessibility of mortality-related thoughts, and death anxiety. Finally, nostalgia confers psychological benefits to individuals with chronic or momentary meaning deficits. These benefits are higher subjective vitality, lower stress, and regulation of meaning-seeking in response to boredom. Taken together, nostalgia helps people attain a more meaningful life, protects from existential threat, and contributes to psychological equanimity.