A prologue to nostalgia: savouring creates nostalgic memories that foster optimism

ABSTRACT

How are nostalgic memories created? We considered savouring as one process involved in the genesis of nostalgia. Whereas nostalgia refers to an emotional reflection upon past experiences, savouring is a process in which individuals deeply attend to and consciously capture a present experience for subsequent reflection. Thus, having savoured an experience may increase the likelihood that it will later be reflected upon nostalgically. Additionally, to examine how cognitive and emotional processes are linked across time, we tested whether nostalgia for a previously savoured experience predicts optimism for the future. Retrospective reports of having savoured a positive event were associated with greater nostalgia for the event (Study 1). Retrospective reports of savouring a time period (college) were associated with greater nostalgia for that time period when participants were in a setting (alumni reunion event) that prompted thoughts of the time period (Study 2). Savouring an experience predicted nostalgia for the experience 4–9 months later (Study 3). Additionally, nostalgia was associated with greater optimism (Studies 2-3). Thus, savouring provides a foundation for nostalgic memories and an ensuing optimism.

KEYWORDS:

• Nostalgia
• savouring
• optimism
• memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Wing-Yee Cheung http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2395-1872

Jacob Juhl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4833-8062

Constantine Sedikides http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3681-4332

Tim Wildschut http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487

Erica Hepper http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4587-5866

Notes

1 We re-ran the analyses for all studies controlling for gender. The significance of the reported analyses did not change when controlling for gender.

2 The degrees of freedom were 115 (instead of 120), because five participants did not complete one item.

3 The degrees of freedom were 117 (instead of 120), because three participants did not complete one item.

4 In a correlational context such as this, ‘indirect effect’ refers to the significant change in relation between two variables when statistically controlling for a mediating variable (Hayes, 2013).

5 Following Goh, Hall, and Rosenthal’s (2016) guidelines, we used fixed effects in which the mean correlation was weighted by sample size.