Bittersweet Versus Bitter or Sweet: The Psychological Implications of Restorative and Reflective Nostalgia (working paper).
Year: 2023

AbstractNostalgia is a multidimensional concept and a subject of interdisciplinary research. Psychologists usually view nostalgia in a positive light as a resource that helps people overcome life discontinuities, contributes to life satisfaction, and builds social ties. In this paper, we show that nostalgia is not necessarily beneficial for people and that, depending on its type, it can play either an adaptive or a nonadaptive role. We distinguish between a wish to reinstate the past in the pres