1,721,187 research outputs found
Data for 'Nostalgia among Syrian Refugees'
No full textData supporting the publication:
Wildschut, Sedikides, & Alowidy. Hanin: Nostalgia among Syrian Refugees. European Journal of Social Psychology</span
Trait nostalgia
No full textWe define trait nostalgia as the proclivity to bring to mind, and reflect wistfully upon, fond and meaningful experiences from one’s personal past. The affective structure of nostalgic experiences is blended, but predominantly positive. Their content is acutely social, and their trajectory is redemptive rather than contaminative. Further, nostalgic experiences are appraised as pleasant, entailing irretrievable loss, being unique and distant, and being approach-oriented, positive, and low arousal. Valid scales designed to assess trait nostalgia are highly correlated (showing convergent validity), and nostalgia emerges as a latent variable in relevant confirmatory factor analysis, while evincing moderate rank-order stability. Moreover, nostalgia is distinct from other past-oriented traits or trait-like modes of thinking about one’s past (i.e., homesickness, life longing, rumination, counterfactual thinking, reminiscence, autobiographical memory). Lastly, nostalgia is associated with or conduces to psychological benefits such as viewing the past and future positively (bearing motivational consequences), feeling imbued with sociality and behaving prosocially, and enjoying psychological well-being, while it buffers against adversity (e.g., losses in meaning, sociality, and psychological well-being). Trait nostalgia is rich in emotional content, distinct, stable, and functional
On the nature of nostalgia: a psychological perspective
No full textWe raise issues about the philosophical claims made in this article regarding the nature of nostalgia. Drawing on psychological research, we contend that nostalgia is rooted in memory rather than time, is directed toward specific objects rather than being object-free, is predominantly positive rather than a form of mourning, and is focused on the past rather than the present or future
Benefits of nostalgia in vulnerable populations
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has triggered and exacerbated psychological distress, and exposed psychological vulnerabilities, in large swathes of the population. Under challenging circumstances, nostalgia may convey tangible psychological and physical health benefits. We review recent evidence for nostalgia’s utility in vulnerable populations, including sojourners and immigrants, civil war refugees, people suffering bereavement, people facing a limited time horizon, and people living with dementia. Having raised the prospect of a positive role for nostalgia in responding to adversity, we next present findings from a series of randomised nostalgia interventions and their impact over time in the workplace, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at university, respectively. We conclude by offering evidence-based recommendations for future interventions, highlighting the importance of optimal person-activity fit, diversity of content, and accessibility of delivery mechanisms
The sociality of personal and collective nostalgia
No full textNostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is an ambivalent—albeit more positive than negative—emotion. Nostalgia is infused with sociality, as it refers to important figures from one’s past or to momentous life events that include those figures. Dispositional nostalgia is related to prejudice reduction via increases in a form of sociality, empathy. Experimentally induced nostalgia fosters sociality, operationalised as social connectedness (sense of acceptance). Social connectedness, in turn, has downstream consequences for (1) inspiration and goal-pursuit, (2) self-continuity and wellbeing, as well as (3) inclusion of an outgroup member in the self or outgroup trust and intergroup contact intentions. At the collective level, nostalgia confers sociality benefits to the ingroup (favourable attitudes, support, loyalty, collective action, barrier to collective guilt), but is also associated with negative sides of sociality such as outgroup rejection and exclusion. Collective nostalgia’s sociality is amenable to exploitation and can have controversial ramifications.<br/
Nostalgia across cultures
No full textNostalgia, a sentimental longing for one’s past, has been garnering keen empirical attention in the psychological literature over the last two decades. After providing a historical overview, we place the emotion in cross-cultural context. Laypeople in many cultures conceptualize nostalgia similarly: as a past-oriented, social, self-relevant, and bittersweet emotion, but more sweet (positively toned) than bitter (negatively toned). That is, the nostalgizer reflects on a fond and personally important event—often their childhood or valued relationships—relives the event through rose-colored glasses, yearns for that time or relationship, and may even wish to return briefly to the past. Also, triggers of nostalgia (e.g., adverts, food, cold temperatures, loneliness) are similar across cultures. Moreover, across cultures nostalgia serves three key functions: it elevates social connectedness (a sense of belongingness or acceptance), meaning in life (a sense that one’s life is significant, purposeful, and coherent), and self-continuity (a sense of connection between one’s past and present self). Further, nostalgia acts as a buffer against discomforting psychological states (e.g., loneliness) similarly in varied cultural contexts. For example, (1) loneliness is positively related to, or intensifies, nostalgia; (2) loneliness is related to, or intensifies, adverse outcomes such as unhappiness or perceived lack of social support; and (3) nostalgia suppresses the relation between loneliness and adverse outcomes. Additionally, nostalgia facilitates one’s acculturation to a host culture. Specifically, (1) nostalgia (vs. control) elicits a positive acculturation orientation toward a host culture; (2) nostalgia (vs. control) amplifies bicultural identity integration; and (3) positive acculturation orientation mediates the effect of host-culture nostalgia on bicultural identity integration. We conclude by identifying lacunae in the literature and calling for follow-up research
Are we all paranoid?
No full textIn 2013 the surveillance scandals in both the US and the UK made headline news. The notion of surveillance is consistent with a key theme in paranoia – believing that other people are spying on us, or out to get us in some way. Research has shown that paranoia is common in the nonclinical population, but why? Perhaps it is evolutionarily adaptive – fearing harmless people is potentially less costly than failing to fear people who are truly hostile and pose a significant threat. Studying paranoia in the general population is important – not just in terms of helping us to understand clinical paranoia, but also in relocating paranoia within the rich human repertoire of daily interpersonal behaviour
The motivational potency of nostalgia: the future is called yesterday
No full textThe emotion of nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one's personal past, has motivational implications. We outline these implications for various forms of approach motivation. One such form is generalized motivation. In particular, nostalgia fosters a sense of youthfulness (i.e., lower subjective age, feeling alert and energetic), boosts inspiration (i.e., transcendence of mundane preoccupations and awareness of new possibilities), and encourages (financial) risk-taking. Another form is localized motivation. In particular, nostalgia promotes a growth orientation (e.g., state authenticity or intrinsic self-expression, growth-oriented self-perceptions and behavioral intentions), galvanizes intrinsic motivation, and strengthens the pursuit of one's important goals. The final form is action-oriented motivation. In particular, nostalgia cements an employee's resolve to stay with the organization (i.e., weakens turnover intentions), increases the propensity to help and actual helping, and contributes indirectly to behavior change (i.e., reduction of problematic behavior such as gambling and drinking). When relevant, we discuss the processes through which nostalgia impacts on motivation, and highlight downstream consequences
Water from the lake of memory: the regulatory model of nostalgia
No full textWe organize the literature on triggers and functions of nostalgia by advancing a regulatory model in which the emotion serves as a homeostatic corrective (i.e., a process that establishes and maintains a relatively stable psychological equilibrium) that countervails the negative effects of psychological perturbations and adverse environmental conditions. We illustrate complementary approaches to testing this model as it applies to transient, or state-level, nostalgia and show how the model can be generalized to different levels of analysis, including chronic, or trait-level, nostalgia and collective nostalgia. We then formulate a proposal for future research inspired by recent developments in causal mediation analysis and conclude with a discussion of the model’s potential boundary conditions
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