A big reason why the '90s continue being so popular could be the fact that the 21st century we live in has been quite mad.
Jacob Juhl, a nostalgia researcher at the University of Southampton in England, says "People become nostalgic in response to adversity or psychologically negative states,” because “Nostalgia helps restore people to a psychological equilibrium."
Juhl notes that scientists have induced nostalgia in the lab by prompting people to contemplate the vast and random universe as well as by simply pumping up the air conditioning and making them feel uncomfortably cold.
Researchers have also proved that nostalgia comforts us by making us feel connected to one another and to a shared past.
Since the '90s were the last moment before the internet splintered mass culture, the decade might be particularly good nostalgia fodder even for those who haven't experienced it.
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This might seem a little counterintuitive. After all, psychologists have traditionally thought of nostalgia as being based on a person’s recollections of their own experiences.
But more recently, some, including philosopher Prof Felipe De Brigard at Duke University, have been suggesting that nostalgia is broader and includes our yearnings.
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De Brigard was inspired by research on memory that's shown it’s a creative process — when you recollect memories, it's not like you're looking up an archive of recordings of what happened, it's more like your brain creates a simulation of those past events.
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In this way, De Brigard argues that nostalgia can be based on memories – simulations of pleasant past experiences – but doesn’t have to be. Given the role of imagination in memory, he believes it's not a huge leap to propose that nostalgia can also be based on imagined positive past experiences.
