Nostalgia shapes and potentiates the future

Nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past” (Pearsall, 1998, p. 1266). This dictionary definition aligns well with lay conceptions (i.e., prototype analysis; cf. Rosch, 1978). Laypeople (Hepper, Ritchie, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012) across 18 cultures (Hepper et al., 2014) think of the construct “nostalgia” as encompassing fond, rose-colored, and personally important (i.e., self-defining) memories of one’s childhood or relationships, but also as encompassing pining and wishing for momentary returns to the past. They think of it, then, as a bittersweet (albeit more positive than negative) emotion that is relevant to the self and close others. Both content analyses of nostalgic narratives (Abeyta, Routledge, Roylance, Wildschut, & Sedikides, 2015; Holak & Havlena, 1998; Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006, Studies 1-2) and in vivo manipulations of nostalgia (Baldwin, Biernat, & Landau, 2015; Wildschut et al., 2006, Studies 5-7; Stephan, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012) have corroborated these properties of the emotion.