Clay Routledge, Professor of Business and author of "Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource", joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss the psychology of nostalgia: why we have it, and why it may be good for our mental health.

Cheddar Reveals

The Psychology of Nostalgia

Welcome back to cheddar reveals brought to you by curiosity stream. Given the current news cycle, you might feel drawn to reminiscing about those simpler times. A new study suggests that you might want to lean into that tendency. Actually, researchers say feelings of nostalgia prompted by looking at old photos and videos can help alleviate common aches and pains by reducing brain activity. The report found both male and female participants had perception reduced a reduced perception of pain when feeling nostalgic feelings of nostalgia and pain come from some of the same parts of the brain and feelings. One might kind of just help decrease the feelings of the other. So you might already have a home remedy to help you ease that headache that you've been dealing with simply by flipping through some old photo albums or pulling up on your couch and watching T. A. T. V. Show from your childhood. All right. What is the point of dwelling on the past when you cannot change it? There is evidence that nostalgia can be a powerful tool for coping with stress and joining us now is Clay Rutledge, professor of business at North Dakota State University and author of nostalgia, a psychological resource, Clay, Why do we experience nostalgia and why is essentially a universal feeling of that all humans share? Yeah, it's definitely universal. I mean we've looked at people all over the world and what's amazing is regardless of the culture, the age um the type of society they have everyone pretty much experiences nostalgia the same way. So the question is why? Well nostalgia appears to have some really important what we call self regulatory functions and what that means is when we're experiencing distressing states or have things going on in our lives that don't make sense. Our brain naturally wants to make sense of the world, Who wants to make sense of our our own lives. We want to have a self story that's coherent that tells us who we are, who were connected to what's meaningful in life. Nostalgia helps us in that process that allows us to access past experiences that we find really valuable and meaningful and helps us figure out who we are and what we want out of life. What's the relationship then between kind of nostalgia and memory? So, nostalgia very much relies on memory of course, because when we engage in nostalgic reflection, we're looking into what we refer to as autobiographical memories. That is These are our memories from our own lives, from our own relationships from our own connections to the broader culture as well. And nostalgia pretty very much relies on that. But at the same time nostalgia has this emotional component, right? We don't just look back on the past coldly when we're nostalgic, we have warm feelings towards the past. And so nostalgia is is kind of this cocktail of emotion and cognition. Memory being the cognition that allows us to not just not just replay videos from the past in our head but to have those feelings associated with them. It's funny you say that warm feeling? Cause that's exactly how I described just a moment ago when we were just talking about what it what it feels like to be nostalgic. It's one of my favorite kind of feelings or emotions or states or however, however it should be characterized. I'm curious though. Um how does nostalgia work to counteract feelings of loneliness, boredom and anxiety? I mean the feeling that most of us feel at some point in our lives. Yeah, so our brain has, you know what some people refer to as a psychological immune system. So when we, when we feel upset or lonely or anxious or stressed or that life is meaningless, our brain doesn't just want to accept that state, it automatically starts looking for solutions as a way to feel better. And nostalgia is a resource that helps us access some of those solutions. So for example, in the case of loneliness, um during the pandemic, for instance, a lot of people felt lonely because they weren't able to to see their family members or their friends. Um and so what they started to do is to, is to go back over the experiences in their lives that were shared with others that they, that made them feel connected and by revisiting those, they served as a reminder that yeah, things aren't great right now. I feel lonely right now, but that's not how things always are. In fact I have a past that's full of rich social social memories and not only does that comfort me in the president, but it also gives me hope for the future. Are there themes of nostalgia universally? Do we have the universe things I talked about? You know, my favorite memories is kind of the smell of a bakery growing up in the Bronx. Do we, do we find kind of these universal three themes across cultures perhaps? Yeah. One thing that's really universal is the social nature of nostalgia. So you know, my guess is your, your experience with, with the bakery or other other types of sensory experiences of nostalgia even though on the surface they might not seem particularly social if you dig a little deeper. My guesses are very much connected to people. Oh they are, it's you know like sunday mornings we gathered together around food and so it was going to the bakery to grab that fresh loaf of bread and then everyone kind of excited about the bread when we got home and kind of cutting it up and you know, having eggs or whatever. Maybe it's it's it's a very kind of social related memory. So people kind of tie nostalgia to those social interactions with, I'm assuming loved ones. Yeah, yeah, definitely love family, close friends, you know, the people that are closest to us are the ones we tend to feel the most nostalgic for and have the most nostalgic memories revolving around that that begs me to ask the question then, are there any kind of negatives of nostalgia, you know? Is there anyone who kind of like shouldn't indulge in these nostalgic feelings? Or are there negative nostalgic feelings? Yeah. So just like pretty much anything that's good for you, whether it's exercise or water, you can overdo it with nostalgia, right? You can have too much of a good thing. And so if you find yourself in a situation where you're, you're regularly engaging in nostalgia and you feel like it might be keeping you from moving forward from living in the present. You know, you shouldn't sit around the house all the time looking at old photos. If that keeps you from going out and actually interacting with people most luckily most of the time, that's not the case. Like most people aren't doing that, they're using nostalgia. I think it's very productive and healthy ways but you can overdo it really quickly. I've got less than a minute, but I'm curious in the age of social media, right? We're more connected than ever. Not only to each other, but just have immediate access to most of our memories. Do you think that nostalgia loop will get smaller because of this? Yeah, I mean that's a really, really good point actually because that is one thing we're seeing that people are that I didn't see years ago when I was doing this research but more recently and definitely seeing people feel nostalgic for something very recent, like the faster society goes, the faster we have changed, I think the more that will happen. But in general people tend to reach further back in their lives when they feel nostalgic, especially like youth adolescents, that that period of time. Yeah, that's fascinating to think about that. You know, nostalgia can be two years ago, whereas for me it's you know, 89 years old running to the bakery with a dollar when you could buy a loaf of bread, two for a dollar back then, Clay really appreciate your insight. Clay Rutledge, professor of business at North Dakota State University and author of nostalgia, a psychological resource.