Can nostalgia help reduce expat anxiety and increase positivity?

It seems that reminiscing over old photos and recalling happier times could be the antidote to negative feelings and uncertainty about your future.

Research led by Dr Wing Yee Cheung from the University of Southampton found that remembering nostalgic events can increase your sense of wellbeing. In simple terms, those who look back with nostalgia over their lives have a more positive outlook about the years ahead. The same reasoning can be applied to coping with expat anxiety associated with moving overseas, by looking back, learning from the past you will see that things can only get better.

The paper, “Back to the Future: Nostalgia Increases Optimism” suggests that nostalgia is not exclusively a past-orientated emotion and that it can benefit future happiness. One of the co-authors, Dr. T Wildchut explained, “Nostalgia is experienced by most people and we know that it can maintain psychological comfort. For example, nostalgic reverie can combat loneliness. We wanted to take that a step further and assess whether it can increase a feeling of optimism about the future.”

The research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin¹ comprises three main elements; recalling nostalgic events, listening to personally nostalgic songs and reading nostalgic lyrics, set against control material.

Fifty per cent of participants in the first test were asked to recall a nostalgic event and write about it, and the rest were asked to think about something more ordinary.  Those remembering nostalgic stories used a much higher number of positive words than the others.

The second test used nostalgic songs to test music’s capacity to influence positivity, with one group listening to personally nostalgic music and the others to control songs. The nostalgic songs resulted in more optimism than the control songs.

In the final test, participants were given nostalgic words to read and were then asked a series of questions about their feelings. Again, this group displayed greater levels of optimism than the control group.

Summary of findings:

• Nostalgia could help people deal with psychological adversity
• Remembering good times in the past can raise self-esteem
• Reminiscing about a time gone by can increase optimism
• Listening to nostalgic songs can produce higher levels of optimism
• Reading personally nostalgic words can result in increased optimism

Similarly, the feel-good factor gained from nostalgic memories was illustrated in a study using pensioners as participants. Simply by getting together to chat about old times over a series of six 30-minute meetings, the participants’ memory increased by up to 12 per cent.

The finding suggest that nostalgia not only provides an opportunity to reminisce, the positivity generated can help you look on the bright side and cope better with adversity.  In a nutshell, remembering the past can help generate feelings of self-worth and a brighter outlook.

Forget any thoughts about wallowing in the past as self-indulgence. If looking back with nostalgia can lead to a more optimistic attitude towards your future, it’s time to get out your old photos, reacquaint yourself with your favourite songs and wallow away.