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Research often shows that nostalgia is a primarily positive emotion that can lift people's spirits. But in these studies, participants are usually asked to recall a past event that makes them feel most nostalgic, and the Dornsife team at the University of Southern California thinks that this approach tends to result in people recalling a unique and overly positive, fond memory.

They have found the opposite may be true. Just like in Bruce Springsteen’s nostalgic song Glory Days, people look back to the good times when they feel dissatisfied with their current life.

"When people are asked to describe something that makes them feel very nostalgic, the positive elements dominate,” said David Newman, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at USC Dornsife. “They think of a pleasant past experience, and the memories they bring to mind have a positive influence on how they see their own life.” 

So, the USC Dornsife team captured how frequently people may feel nostalgic and how intense their feelings are in daily life. The psychologists asked about 230 undergraduate students, in exchange for course credit, to complete daily questionnaires for 14 days.

These diary studies included questions about whether they had positive or negative interactions with friends or acquaintances, experienced positive moments of achievement, or had negative moments, such as falling behind on coursework.

They also asked about events that could potentially evoke feelings of nostalgia, such as whether the participants had heard a song on the radio that they hadn’t heard in a while.

The results showed that people were likely to feel nostalgic when things were going wrong in the present.

"These negative experiences colored nostalgia in a negative light," Newman said. On days when people felt nostalgic, they reported feeling more stressed, depressed, and lonely; expressed more regret and rumination; were less satisfied with their life, and reported lower self-esteem. They also felt less peaceful and calm and expressed more rumination on the following day. 

But although people tend to feel nostalgic when they have had negative experiences, the team of psychologists found another surprising positive correlation.

People were likely to feel nostalgic on days “when they had helped others, were reminded of old friendships or music, felt inspired and engaged in social media use," the researchers explained.

Based on their analysis, Newman and colleagues concluded that nostalgia is a mixed bag — but the mix is decidedly negative in day-to-day life.

"The results from these studies stand in sharp contrast to the prevailing conclusion from previous research, which had indicated that nostalgia is a mixed but predominantly positive emotion,” Newman said.

"Deliberately engaging in the recollection of extremely nostalgic moments may improve well-being,” he said. "But in most situations in daily life, feeling nostalgic may not feel very pleasant."