Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events
Longing for the good old days or a warm childhood.
It is caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more favorably and future more negatively.
In reference to society or institutions, this process is called declinism, and is an emotional strategy to bring comfort to what the present seems as intolerably bleak.
Emotion is a strong evoker of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain.
Recollections of one’s past are usually important events, people one cares about, and places where one has spent time, music, movies, television shows, and video games, as well as natural phenomena such as weather and environment are triggers of nostalgia.
Nostalgia was for centuries considered a potentially debilitating and sometimes fatal medical condition expressing extreme homesickness.
Nostalgia presently is viewed as an independent, and even positive, emotion that many people experience often.
It has important psychological functions, such as to improve mood, increase social connectedness, enhance positive self-regard, and provide existential meaning.
Nostalgic reflections overall seem to benefit those who experience them, and
may lead to a chronic disposition or personality trait of “nostalgia proneness.”
Nostalgia has also been associated with learning and memory consolidation.
Nostalgia is often triggered by negative feelings, it results in increasing one’s mood and heightening positive emotions, which can stem from feelings of warmth or coping resulting from nostalgic reflections.
To effectively cope with problems that hinder one’s happiness, nostalgia proneness positively related to successful methods of coping throughout all stages—planning and implementing strategies, and reframing an issue positively.
Coping strategies that are likely among nostalgia-prone people often lead to benefits during stressful times, as nostalgia can be connected to focusing on coping strategies and implementing them, thus increasing support in challenging times.
The memories of people one was close to, can increase one’s sense of social support and connections.
Nostalgia can be triggered by feelings of loneliness, but has counteracting feelings with reflections of close relationships.
Lonely people often have lesser perceptions of social support, while nostalgia actually increases perceptions of social support.
Nostalgia serves a restorative function for individuals regarding their social connectedness.
A desire for more social interaction is often the motivation for historical reenactments, bringing together people with a shared nostalgia for historical periods of past times facilitating socialization.
Nostalgia serves as a coping mechanism and helps people to enhance positive feelings about themselves.
Individuals who think thought of nostalgic memories shows greater accessibility of positive characteristics than those who thought of exciting future experiences.
Participants not exposed to nostalgic experiences reflect a pattern of selfish and self-centered attributes.
Nostalgia increase one’s self-esteem and meaning in life by buffering threats to well-being and also by initiating a desire to deal with problems or stress.
Nostalgia correlates positively with one’s sense of meaning in life.
Nostalgia increases one’s perceived meaning in life, which was thought to be mediated by a sense of social support or connectedness.
Nostalgia is able to not only create meaning but buffer threats to meaning by breaking the connection between a lack of meaning and one’s well-being.
Nostalgic people have greater perceived meaning, search for meaning less, and can better buffer existential threat.
Nostalgia promotes growth-oriented behaviors and encourages individuals to view themselves as growth-oriented people.
Nostalgia appears as two ways: restorative nostalgia, a wish to return to that past, and reflective nostalgia which is more critically aware.
Reliving past memories may provide comfort and contribute to mental health.
Thinking about the past fondly increased perceptions of physical warmth.
The more people reported having major disruptions and uncertainties in their lives, the more they nostalgically longed for the past.
Old movies and TV shows can trigger nostalgia.
Old video games can trigger nostalgia.
Natural factors such as weather and temperature can trigger nostalgia.
Cold weather makes people more nostalgic, while nostalgia causes people to feel warmer.
Nostalgia is triggered by something reminding an individual of an event or item from their past, that elicits emotions that can vary from happiness to sorrow.
The term feeling nostalgic usually describes pleasurable emotions associated with and/or a longing to go back to a particular period of time.
In rhetoric and communication
nostalgia can be used a tool of rhetoric and persuasion.
Nostalgia has a true hope for recovering good memory.
Vicarious nostalgia is a feeling of yearning for a moment that occurred prior to, or outside of, the span of one’s memory, but is relatable with sentimental value due to repeated exposure to it.
The constant propagating of advertisements and other media messages makes vicarious nostalgia possible.