A set of University of Surrey, University of Southampton, and North Dakota State University researchers identified relationships between personal nostalgia and psychological wellness across the lifespan. These researchers describe personal nostalgia as reminiscences about fond, meaningful memories of one’s own social experiences. Sentimentality with a tinge of longing distinguish personal nostalgia from certain other contemplations about the past. Historical nostalgia, in contrast to personal nostalgia, consists of a preference for objects or circumstances which characterized a period in the past. The memories aren’t necessarily of specific situations, the emotions are less strong, and there is less thinking about the socializing.
Personal nostalgia eases discomforts when there’s a limited time ahead for completion of an objective, say the researchers. This is why personal nostalgia facilitates psychological wellbeing. Throughout adulthood, people will call upon personal nostalgia in times of loneliness, discontinuity, and existential doubt. Because the elderly are more likely to have a shortened future time perspective, nostalgia has added influence on wellbeing.
Yet please consider as promising, not definitive, my idea based on the study results that augmenting personal nostalgia in older adults will foster their wellness as they continue to age. The Surrey/Southampton/North Dakota study participants weren’t selected to be representative of the general population, the study design was cross-sectional by chronological age instead of longitudinal, and the data analysis was correlational. Still, the study conclusions are supported by other findings.
There’s a possible exception to this overall support, though. Researchers at Dartmouth College and University of Pennsylvania discovered that younger and older adults derive happiness from different sorts of experiences. For the young, it tends to be the extraordinary and infrequent. For older people, it tends to be the ordinary and frequent.
The explanation has to do with the place of experiences in self-identity. Young adults are often in a process of defining their self-identity. Distinctive experiences are of interest. Elderly adults are more concerned with strengthening an established identity as they approach the end of life. Reminiscing about repeated similar experiences helps with that.
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Appeal to Nostalgia
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