How Does Nostalgia Conduce to Global Self-Continuity? The Roles of Identity Narrative, Associative Links, and Stability

Mental Time Travel as Self-Affirmation

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT

This article integrates and advances the scope of research on the role of mental time travel in bolstering the self. We propose that imagining the self in the future (prospection) or in the past (retrospection) highlights central and positive self-aspects. Thus, bringing to mind one's future or past broadens the perceived bases of self-integrity and offers a route to self-affirmation. In reviewing corresponding research programs on self-prospection and nostalgia, we illustrate that mental time travel serves to affirm the self in terms of self-esteem, coherence, and control. Mental time travel could be implemented as a source of self-affirmation for facilitating coping and behavior change in several domains such as relationships, health, education, and organizational contexts.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

People can mentally travel to their future or to their past. When people imagine what they will be like in the future, or what they were like in the past, they tend to think about themselves in terms of the important and positive attributes that they possess. Thinking about themselves in such an affirming way expands and consolidates their self-views. This broader image of themselves can increase self-esteem (the extent to which one likes who they are), coherence (the extent to which one perceives life as meaningful), and control (the extent to which one feels capable of initiating and pursuing goals or effecting desirable outcomes). Mental time travel, then, has favorable or affirming consequences for one's self-views. These consequences can be harnessed to modify one's behavior in such life domains as relationships, health, education, and work.

Distress prospectively predicts higher nostalgia, and nostalgia prospectively predicts lower distress

OBJECTIVE

We were concerned with the relation between distress and nostalgia. At the state level, extensive research has established that momentary nostalgia is evoked by (experimentally manipulated) distress. However, at the trait level, the directionality of this relation is unclear. We conducted a longitudinal study to clarify the directional relation between these two constructs.

METHOD

We surveyed first-year university students (N = 3167) twice across six months. We assessed nostalgia, psychological distress (depression), and physical distress (somatization) at both timepoints. We also assessed Big Five personality at the first timepoint.

RESULTS

Initial distress prospectively predicted increased nostalgia, and initial nostalgia prospectively predicted reduced distress, six months later and independently of the Big Five.

CONCLUSIONS

Habitual nostalgia follows rather than precedes naturalistically occurring distress and serves to relieve it.

Low Self-Concept Clarity Inhibits Self-Control: The Mediating Effect of Global Self-Continuity

Whether and how self-concept clarity (SCC) affects self-control has not been sufficiently explored in empirical research. We proposed that low SCC inhibits self-control through a lower sense of global self-continuity. The results of five studies provided converging support for our mediation model (N = 898). Compared with participants with high SCC, participants with low SCC scored lower on self-control scales (Studies 1 and 2), spent less time practicing to improve their performance on a tedious task (Study 3), and were less likely to stay focused on an ongoing task (Study 4) or to adhere to the exercise plan to stay healthy (Study 5). Global self-continuity mediated the effects of low SCC on self-control (Studies 1-5) even after emotional affect (Study 5) and self-esteem (Studies 4 and 5) were controlled for. These findings highlight the importance of fostering SCC for coping with self-control failures.

Anticipated nostalgia

Anticipated nostalgia is the foreseeing of looking back on life events and expecting to feel nostalgic about it in the future. I review recent findings on the content, affective profile, and psychological benefits of anticipated nostalgia. I also review neurological and cognitive evidence that may explain the mechanism underlying anticipated nostalgia. Finally, I discuss anticipated nostalgia in an applied setting, consumer behavior.

The past promotes the picture of health: Nostalgia as a resource for physical well-being

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, confers an array of psychological, emotional, and social benefits. This review article discusses emerging evidence that exemplify how nostalgia also contributes to better physical health. Nostalgia's capacity for health promotion is highlighted in relation to five key areas: (a) nurturing positive health attitudes, (b) increasing physical activity, (c) improving dietary choices, (d) reducing health risk behavior, and (e) attenuating physical pain. These recent developments demonstrate that nostalgia serves as a resource to enhance multiple dimensions of physical well-being. Suggestions for future research on the nostalgia-physical health relationship include identifying additional mechanisms, extending the scope of its health benefits, and determining the efficacy of long-term health promotion.

Self-Continuity

Self-continuity is the subjective sense of connection between one's past and present selves (past-present self-continuity), between one's present and future selves (present-future self-continuity), or among one's past, present, and future selves (global self-continuity). We consider the motivational character of the three forms of self-continuity, their regulatory properties, and the internal or external factors that consolidate them. We also review their consequences for attitudes and judgments or decisions, motivation, intentions and behavior, and psychological and physical health. We further detail the psychological and behavioral benefits of self-discontinuity (i.e., a sense of disconnect among temporal selves). We next turn to the brain regions that are activated synchronously with self-continuity. We consider developmental perspectives on self-continuity, discuss collective self-continuity (along with its consequences and regulatory properties), and elaborate on cultural differences in self-continuity. This inaugural Annual Reviews chapter demonstrates the breadth, excitement, and sense of synergy among self-continuity researchers and points to promising research directions.

Pandemic Nostalgia: Reduced Social Contact Predicts Consumption of Nostalgic Music During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Some scholars observed a “nostalgia bump” during the COVID-19 pandemic, where people compensated for social isolation by engaging with products and experiences evoking nostalgia. To further explore this effect and its underlying mechanism, the authors tested the hypothesis that reduced social contact during lockdown conditions would lead people to feel lonely and bored and, in turn, increase their consumption of nostalgic music. Study 1 ( Nsong = 213,464) established the temporal relationships between social contact and nostalgia by analyzing mobility data and daily listening patterns of top songs on the music platform Spotify from 2019 to 2021. Study 2 ( N = 525) was a retrospective survey of individual experiences during the lockdown period. Results showed that reduced social contact had an indirect positive effect on consumption of nostalgic songs through loneliness, but not boredom. These findings shed light on the use of nostalgia as a coping strategy during times of isolation.

Photographic intervention effect on positive and negative affects during COVID-19: Mediating role of future self-continuity

Meaning in Life (MIL) is a protective factor that buffers the impact of COVID-19 epidemic on emotions. Our study aimed to explore whether photographic intervention based on MIL could increase Positive Affect (PA) and mitigate Negative Affect (NA), and whether Future Self-Continuity (FSC) functioned as a mediator between them. In this study, 90 college students were randomly divided into an intervention group or a control group. Participants in the intervention group were asked to take a photo and describe it every 2 days lasting 2 weeks. All the participants in the two groups were measured by the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and Future Self-Continuity Scale before and after the intervention. The results showed that: (1) Before the intervention, there were no significant differences in baseline levels of MIL, PA and NA, and FSC between intervention and control groups. (2) In the intervention group, compared to pre-test, the scores of MIL, PA, and FSC of post-test increased significantly, and the score of NA of post-test decreased significantly. (3) After the intervention, the scores of MIL, PA, and FSC in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group; NA score in the intervention group was significantly lower than that in the control group. (4) In terms of the difference score (post-test minus pre-test), FSC was a mediator between MIL and PA. Our study demonstrated that photographic intervention could effectively improve college students' MIL, PA, and FSC while mitigating NA. Moreover, MIL could significantly enhance PA by the mediating role of FSC.

Nostalgia and Spirituality

Abstract. We investigated the relation between nostalgia and spirituality. We hypothesized that nostalgia is linked to greater spirituality through self-continuity and, in turn, meaning in life. In Study 1, we measured nostalgia and spirituality. Nostalgia predicted greater spirituality. In Study 2, we tested this relation in a nationally representative sample. Nostalgia again predicted greater spirituality, and this relation remained significant after controlling for key demographic variables and core personality traits. In Study 3, we manipulated nostalgia and measured self-continuity, meaning in life, and spirituality. Nostalgia predicted spirituality serially via self-continuity and meaning in life.

Nostalgia strengthens global self-continuity through holistic thinking

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one's meaningful past, promotes global self-continuity (GSC), a sense of connection among one's past, present, and future selves. We identified a cognitive mechanism for this effect: holistic thinking, and in particular interactional causality (presupposing multiple causes that interact to influence an object's behaviour). In three studies, using measurement-of-mediation and experimental-causal-chain designs, nostalgia was related to, and caused, higher GSC through interactional causality. In cross-sectional Study 1, trait nostalgia was associated with GSC via interactional causality. In Study 2, induced nostalgia led to higher interactional causality and ensuing GSC. In Study 3, manipulated interactional causal thinking increased GSC.