This article was originally published with the title "Embrace the Nostalgia" in SA Mind 27, 6, 8-9 (November 2016)ĭoi:10. People in Saint Petersburg at the Immortal Regiment, carrying portraits of their ancestors who fought in the Great Patriotic War. He calls the feeling, which we naturally experience several times a week, “a psychological immune response that is triggered when you experience little bumps in the road.” So if you are feeling a bit discombobulated over the holidays, pull out a photo album and spend some time revisiting your past. For example, it’s important for American society to feel nostalgic for the days that Norman Rockwell captured in his paintings. Nostalgia keeps society from going off the rails by making us remember the best parts of the past, psychiatrist and author Carole Lieberman says. Tim Wildschut, one of Sedikides's Southampton collaborators on the paper, notes there are many ways people elicit nostalgia-looking at photographs, cooking certain meals, sharing stories or playing music. Mental health experts say it can be a double-edged sword. Nostalgia may be characterized in four wordssadness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and weakness. They also went a step further and observed, via questionnaires about other concurrent feelings, that self-continuity brings a feeling of vitality-of “energy and spirit.” The nost- in nostalgia means 'homecoming,' and such sentimental yearning for home during field operations was viewed as a disorder of the brain, with symptoms ranging from melancholy and malnutrition to brain fever and hallucinations. The researchers found this pattern in American, British and Chinese participants. Sentimental recollections often include loved ones, which can remind us of a social web that extends across people-and across time. But here they found that nostalgia boosted self-continuity by increasing a sense of social connectedness. In several experiments conducted online and in the laboratory, when subjects were induced to experience wistful reverie via sentimental song lyrics or memories, they reported greater self-continuity, as measured by a validated index that asks participants how much they agree with statements such as “I feel connected with my past” and “important aspects of my personality remain the same over time.” Constantine Sedikides, a psychologist at the University of Southampton in England and the primary author of the paper, which was recently published in Emotion, had shown this effect in a 2015 paper. A new paper illuminates why it works, finding that this sepia-toned sentiment does not cement us in the past but actually raises our spirit and vitality. The hyperreal is more real than real: something fake and artificial comes to. Recently scientists have explored the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia, finding that it serves a positive function, improving mood and possibly mental health. On holidays, it's natural to feel a longing for times gone by-a childhood spent singing carols or meals spent with now departed loved ones.
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