Nostalgia reconsidered

Nostalgia is standardly assumed to be directed towards the past, to involve some salient feeling of the irretrievability of the past, and to be directed towards the memory of an event. In this paper I argue that none of these standard assumptions hold. I use a time-traveller example to demonstrate that nostalgia is not essentially past-directed. Once nostalgia is prised from the objective past, we can examine the other purported conditions, making space for the conclusion that the felt irretrievability of the past is not the necessary feature of nostalgia that we assumed it to be. I then argue that the notion that nostalgia is directed towards the memory of an event is misguided. Finally, I distinguish two routes to nostalgia and, with this distinction in place, argue that nostalgia is neither essentially time nor place directed. Nostalgia is simply change-directed.     

怀旧心理研究述评

怀旧是一种思念过去时复杂的情绪状态, 它既可以是正面的, 也可以是负面的, 还可以是苦乐参半的。可以从社会、文化等不同角度对怀旧进行分类。怀旧具有储藏正性情绪、维持和提高自我的积极性、增强社会联系、使人具有存在感、统一自我等功能。目前, 对怀旧的研究主要采用内容分析法、问卷法和实验法。已有一些研究成果应用于市场营销、旅游开发以及心理咨询和治疗方面。根据我国的社会、文化、历史特点深入开展怀旧的理论和应用研究是很有必要的。     

自我概念对两类怀旧广告诉求有效性的影响

在怀旧风潮盛行的大背景下, 怀旧广告日益受到了广告主的青睐。然而, 由于怀旧诉求未能正确匹配目标受众, 导致一些怀旧广告的无效甚至是起反面效果。基于此, 通过区分个人怀旧诉求和虚拟集体怀旧诉求, 并将其联结于消费者的两种自我概念形态(独立自我与互依自我), 经由两个实验探查了受众的自我概念形态对不同怀旧广告诉求的反应。实验一采用2(怀旧诉求：个人怀旧与虚拟集体怀旧)×2(自我概念：独立自我与互依自我)组间因子设计, 检验自我概念形态是否对个人怀旧诉求广告、虚拟集体怀旧诉求广告的效果起调节作用; 实验二通过对自我概念采用不一样的操控方式, 对认知反应进行更加有效的测量, 对同一被试接触到怀旧广告信息前后的品牌态度进行对比等, 重复检验了实验一的研究结果。实验结果显示：独立自我程度高的消费者往往偏好于个人怀旧诉求, 而互依自我程度高的消费者往往偏好于虚拟集体怀旧诉求。研究结果表明：怀旧虽是一项很好的广告题材, 但在具体应用时, 需要注意怀旧诉求与目标受众的匹配性。本研究拓展了自我概念这一重要心理变量在怀旧广告领域的应用; 同时, 论文研究结果对于怀旧营销、跨文化营销也有一定的启示意义。     

The Immigrant, the Exile, and the Experience of Nostalgia

Resulting from a retrospective idealization of lost objects, nostalgia helps the immigrant defend against the aggression resulting from current frustrations. This experience is missing in the exile whose deeply traumatizing departure from his land of origin spoils whatever good memories of that land might exist within him. Retrospective idealization is not possible and the ego is deprived of the nostalgic defense. The psychoanalyst dealing with the immigrant's nostalgia must offer psychic space for its development while keeping an eye upon the hidden transference allusions in the nostalgic pleasure as well as upon its screen functions vis-à-vis aggression in the here and now. Psychoanalytic work with the exile requires a different slant. Empathy with how bad the land of origin was must precede for a long while before defenses against the emergence of nostalgia can be analyzed.     

Nostalgia as a Linking Phenomenon

Immigrants and refugees who leave behind their countries, loved ones, and cultural environment experience loss and are obliged to go through a mourning process which may become complicated due to a variety of factors. Many such individuals create linking objects or linking phenomena that help them to continue to have contact with the past, while adjusting to their new environment. Nostalgia is the affect that accompanies linking objects and linking phenomena and at times functions itself as a linking phenomenon. The lack of nostalgia, poisoned nostalgia, and nostalgia in the service of adaptation are discussed with clinical examples.     

Hanin: Nostalgia among Syrian refugees

We examined the psychological functions of nostalgia (hanin in Arabic) among Syrian refugees residing in Saudi Arabia, who were forcibly displaced during the Syrian civil war. Forced displacement entails disruption, loss, and mourning, creating a salient contrast between one's past and present circumstances, which could attenuate the benefits of nostalgia. Studying this population thus affords a strong test of the boundaries of nostalgia's functionality. We experimentally induced nostalgia via vivid autobiographical recall and then assessed various psychological functions, as well as current affect. A supplemental objective was to examine the role of dispositional resilience. Most established benefits of nostalgia also accrued to Syrian refugees. However, contrary to previous findings, nostalgia decreased optimism, highlighting the limits of its palliative capacity among displaced individuals. As hypothesized, the impact of nostalgia was moderated by dispositional resilience, which acted as a catalyst of the emotion's benefits and as an inhibitor of its costs.     

怀旧与亲社会行为的关系:一个有中介的调节模型

本研究考察了怀旧影响亲社会行为的心理机制及其边界条件。研究1对500名大学生进行问卷调查。研究2以127名大学生为研究对象,使用实验法操纵怀旧（VS.非怀旧）,两个分研究得到了一致的结果：（1）生命意义在怀旧与亲社会行为之间起部分中介作用;（2）心理需要满足调节了怀旧对亲社会行为的影响。该研究丰富了怀旧和亲社会行为的文献,并对心理咨询行业具有一定实践指导意义。     

An exercise in nostalgia: Nostalgia promotes health optimism and physical activity

Objective: Previous research has shown that nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, leads to greater feelings of optimism, with other work demonstrating that optimistic thinking (general & health-orientated) is associated with better physical and psychological health. Integrating these two lines of research, the current studies examined whether nostalgia-induced health optimism promotes attitudes and behaviours associated with better physical well-being.

Methods: Participants, in three experiments, were randomly assigned to write about either a nostalgic or ordinary event. Following this, everyone completed a measure of health optimism (Studies 1–3), measures of health attitudes (Study 2) and had their physical activity monitored over the course of 2 weeks (Study 3).

Results: The results revealed that, in comparison to control conditions, nostalgic reverie led to greater health optimism (Studies 1–3). Further, heightened health optimism following nostalgic reflection led to more positive health attitudes (Study 2), and increased physical activity over a two-week period (i.e. Fitbit activity trackers; Study 3).

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of nostalgia on health attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, this work suggests that nostalgia can be used as a mechanism to increase the importance, perceived efficacy and behaviour associated with better physical health.     

社会排斥对消费选择偏向的影响：怀旧的调节作用及社会联结的中介作用

社会排斥会导致许多消极影响,人们会尝试通过各种策略对此进行缓解,而消费是其中重要的一种应对方式。本文通过3个实验考察了社会排斥和消费选择偏向（体验性消费vs.实物性消费）的关系,同时探讨了怀旧的调节作用和社会联结的中介作用。结果发现,社会排斥可以提高消费者对体验性消费的偏好,怀旧调节了社会排斥与体验性消费偏向的关系,并通过社会联结的中介作用进一步缓冲了社会排斥对消费选择偏向的影响。     

Nostalgia for America's past can buffer collective guilt

This research examined when, and for whom, American collective nostalgia can relieve feelings of collective guilt. In the Pilot Study, path analyses revealed that national glorification is associated with collective nostalgia, and collective nostalgia is associated with lower collective guilt. Our experimental studies test the role of these variables in determining responses to the elevated salience of past ingroup harm doing. Collective nostalgia was associated with lower collective guilt especially after reminders of America's harm doing in Study 1 . In Study 2 we predicted and showed that reminders of American harm doing would evoke spontaneous collective nostalgia for participants high in national glorification. The remaining studies tested the hypothesis that collective nostalgia serves to buffer collective guilt. Collective guilt was lower after reminders of past harm doing for participants who engaged in collective nostalgia ( Study 3 ), and this was especially pronounced for participants high in national glorification ( Study 4 ).     

Nostalgia and lost identity

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union is a major social phenomenon in Russia today due to the irrevocable losses of the recent past in which Soviet citizens involuntarily became immigrants in their own country. With reference to discussions of nostalgia in philosophical and psychoanalytic literature, I suggest that nostalgia may represent either a defensive regression to the past or a progressive striving for wholeness through re‐connecting with what has been lost in the service of a greater integration. I compare this with the processes of adaptation seen in immigrants and provide a clinical illustration of a young man coming to terms with loss and change in the post‐Soviet era. When nostalgia is recognized as a legitimate emotional experience it may facilitate mourning and enable the integration of the past with the present and the development of a new identity.     

Nostalgia in response to group‐based exclusion: The role of attachment‐related avoidance

We proposed that nostalgia, by virtue of its sociality, can be an indirect strategy to counteract relational deficiencies stemming from group‐based exclusion. We instructed Greek participants to recall an event in which they experienced exclusion on the basis of their nationality versus a control event. We anticipated that participants would react to group‐based exclusion with increased nostalgia. Specifically, because low attachment‐related avoidance facilitates proximity‐seeking in response to distress, we hypothesized that group‐based exclusion would increase nostalgia (a form of proximity‐seeking) more strongly when avoidance is low. Results supported this moderation hypothesis. In turn, increased nostalgia in response to group‐based exclusion predicted stronger ingroup identification. For low‐avoidants, then, group‐based exclusion fortified ingroup identification via increased nostalgia (moderated mediation).     

Nostalgia motivates pursuit of important goals by increasing meaning in life

This research focused on existential and motivational implications of the emotion of nostalgia. Nostalgia (relative to control) increased meaning in life, which, in turn, galvanised intentions to pursue one's most important goal (Experiment 1) and to pursue one's most important, but not least important, goal (Experiment 2). The basic pattern held in two cultures (British and Danish) independently of positive affect. This is the first evidence that nostalgia has specific motivational consequences (i.e., pursuit of more, but not less, important goals) and transmits these consequences via meaning in life. Also, this is the first evidence that meaning is associated with specific motivational consequences. Discussion considers the relevance of the findings for the emotion and motivation literatures.     

Religion in Global Perspective: SSSR Presidential Panel

Global processes present a challenge for scholarly work on religion, necessitating new concepts, theoretical and analytical models, intellectual sensitivity, and imagination. This calls for focusing on (1) cross‐border interpenetration of religious organizations, beliefs, and practices; (2) variations in the potential for religious beliefs and institutions to be transported; and (3) the use of multiple frames of reference to examine the dispersion of religious cultures and communities. A presidential panel presents the need for generating new research questions, improving measurement tools, and updating methodological techniques so that social scientists of religion accurately and authentically portray the nature and expression of religion in the 21st century.     

The ethics of return migration and education: transnational duties in migratory processes

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that most prominent normative theories on immigration neglect a critical dimension of the migratory phenomenon, a neglect that blinds them to important rights that, under some circumstances, immigrants ought to have as a matter of justice. Specifically, the paper argues that these theories fail to appreciate that the children of immigrant families, regardless of whether they were born in their parents’ country or in the host country, should benefit from educational rights addressing needs that are particular to their situation. These children may be forced to move between these two countries. This situation generates an obligation for both states (‘receiving’ and ‘sending’) to act jointly to provide educational opportunities so that these children are fully conversant with both cultures and in both languages. Put succinctly, then, we argue that since children of immigrant families lack any certainty of permanent residence in the host society owing to the threat of deportation and the precarity of their legal status, host and home societies bear the duty to offer an education that allows them to be functional in both societies.     

The power of the past: Nostalgia as a meaning-making resource

In three experiments we tested whether nostalgia bolsters meaning in life relative to two other modes of autobiographical thought: imagining a desired future experience and recalling a positive past experience. In Experiment 1 participants thought about a nostalgic or desired future experience and then completed a presence of meaning scale. Thinking about a nostalgic (compared to desired future) experience increased perceived presence of meaning. In Experiment 2 we examined whether nostalgia can additionally reduce the search for meaning. Participants thought about a nostalgic, desired future or recent positive experience, and then completed a search for meaning scale. Nostalgia, relative to both comparison conditions, decreased the search for meaning. Finally we tested whether, by virtue of its capacity to increase meaning, nostalgia can mitigate threats to meaning. In Experiment 3 participants were exposed to either absurd or representational art, under the guise that they would later have to interpret its meaning, and then thought about either a nostalgic or a recent positive experience. Meaning was subsequently measured. The absurd art interpretation condition decreased the perceived presence of meaning but nostalgic reflection attenuated this effect.     

安乐死合法化的哲学辩护——以自由主义哲学为视角

安乐死问题一直都是一个争议性话题。从学理上,安乐死可以分为自愿安乐死和无意愿安乐死。自由主义的伦理学分为义务论和功利主义。以自由主义哲学观来审视两类安乐死合法化问题:自愿安乐死体现病人自由意志的选择,是人格尊严之自主性的结果;无意愿安乐死是由利益相关人代为选择,符合社会利益的最大化。通过严格立法来规范安乐死行为,也应成为我国法律的理性选择。     

The Medieval Commentary Tradition:

No abstract available for this article.     

The matryoshka: The three-generation soviet family in Israel

Among the 200,000 immigrants who entered Israel in 1990 were a considerable number of families headed by single mothers. Their most prominent feature was the fact that a three-generation system—a single Soviet mother, her own mother, and a single child—formed the family unit. Rooted in changes occurring in the Soviet family life cycle over the past 70 years, this configuration is uniquely self-contained. This article is an early inquiry into a new family structure that will become part of the social fabric of the multi-ethnic society in Israel. The challenge will be to help in the absorption process by recognizing, encouraging, and facilitating the strengths this type of family brings with it and to plan support networks to substitute for those left behind.A previous version of this article was presented at the Third World Family Therapy Congress, June 2–6, 1991, Jyvaskyla, Finland.