Bittersweet Versus Bitter or Sweet: The Psychological Implications of Restorative and Reflective Nostalgia (working paper).

Abstract

Nostalgia is a multidimensional concept and a subject of interdisciplinary research. Psychologists usually view nostalgia in a positive light as a resource that helps people overcome life discontinuities, contributes to life satisfaction, and builds social ties. In this paper, we show that nostalgia is not necessarily beneficial for people and that, depending on its type, it can play either an adaptive or a nonadaptive role. We distinguish between a wish to reinstate the past in the present (restorative nostalgia) and reflection on the passage of time (reflective nostalgia). In five consecutive cross-section studies (n = 614, n = 2,428, n = 734, n = 2,128, n = 575), we demonstrated the dual nature of nostalgia in various areas of life, such as nostalgia after communism, nostalgia for the lost place, and homesickness. We showed that only reflective nostalgia was associated with positive psychological outcomes, such as optimism about one’s life, perceived group and place continuity, place attachment, mature national identification, and openness to change. By contrast, restorative nostalgia was correlated with life pessimism, a sense of uprootedness, a preference for the physical and social status quo, and national glorification. We demonstrated similar patterns of relationships independent of the contents of the scales of nostalgia. We discuss the possible implications of these two different forms of nostalgia.Keywords: nostalgia for communism, nostalgia for the lost place, homesickness, restorative and reflective nostalgia