Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Recent research overwhelmingly suggests that experiencing nostalgia feels good (e.g., Wildschut et al., 2006).The present research aimed to explain this positive mood by considering how nostalgia influences comparisons between past and current selves.Informed by predictions from Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory (Wilson & Ross, 2001), I predicted that nostalgia would prompt positive mood by moving past and present selfdescriptions towards one another, particularly when nostalgic memories feel subjectively close.Consistent with these expectations, two studies demonstrated that nostalgia was associated with increasing similarity in positivity of a past self-affect relative to a present self-affect (Studies 1 & 2).This effect was moderated by subjective closeness to the past self such that people rated their past and present selves as similarly positive to the extent that they were both nostalgic about and subjectively close to the memory (Study 2).Moreover, when people were experimentally induced to experience nostalgia, and they saw their memory as subjectively close, they showed high positive mood that stemmed from an increasingly positive past self and an unchanged present self (Study 3).Nevertheless, if a nostalgic memory was subjectively distant people showed decreased positivity surrounding their present selves.Similar effects were observed for people contemplating a positive future self, suggesting that the positive mood typically associated with nostalgia may simply arise from considering a positive temporal self.
Author: Hannah Osborn
Institution: Ohio University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2618194154