Nostalgia strengthens global self-continuity through holistic thinking

ABSTRACT

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one’s meaningful past, promotes global self-continuity (GSC), a sense of connection among one’s past, present, and future selves. We identified a cognitive mechanism for this effect: holistic thinking, and in particular interactional causality (presupposing multiple causes that interact to influence an object’s behaviour). In three studies, using measurement-of-mediation and experimental-causal-chain designs, nostalgia was related to, and caused, higher GSC through interactional causality. In cross-sectional Study 1, trait nostalgia was associated with GSC via interactional causality. In Study 2, induced nostalgia led to higher interactional causality and ensuing GSC. In Study 3, manipulated interactional causal thinking increased GSC.

KEYWORDS:

• Nostalgia
• global self-continuity
• holistic thinking
• interactional causality

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Self-continuity—connection between one’s past and present selves—is also positively associated with psychological benefits; further, nostalgia is associated with, or triggers, self-continuity (Sedikides et al., 2015a, 2016).

2 Hong et al. (2020, Study 1) reported an alpha of .79 for the same scale.

3 In Choi et al. (2007, Table 1), causality included items 1 (r=.617), 2 (r=.591), 3 (r=.592), 4 (r=.543), 5 (r=.529), and 6 (r=.575). Attitude toward contradiction included items 7 (r=.538), 8 (r=.648), 9 (r=.613), 10 (r=.531), 11 (r=.242), and 12 (r=.376). Perception of change included items 13 (r=.476), 14 (r=.610), 15 (r=.522), 16 (r=.685), 17 (r=.242), 18 (r=.360). Locus of attention included items 19 (r=.671), 20 (r=.652), 21 (r=.628), 22 (r=.706), 23 (r=.415), and 24 (r=.259). The coefficients in brackets are from Study 1. We chose items 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, and 22.