May 8, 2025
4 min read
The social and psychological consequences of yearning for the past are starting to come into focus
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Nostalgia is a complex emotion. It blends sentimental longing for a cherished past and the bittersweet realization that one can never fully return to that time. Psychologists have long puzzled over why humans experience this intricate emotion and its possible functions: Does nostalgia trap us in the past, or does it function as a psychological resource that could lead us to the future?
People can feel nostalgic about many things, but research shows that nostalgic narratives often center on others, especially those who hold significant meaning in our lives. We may feel nostalgic for childhood family gatherings, shared experiences with school friends or holidays spent with loved ones. Even when we are nostalgic about objects, such as childhood toys or the aroma of a particular meal, those feelings often feature moments we shared with the people around us.
The social tones of nostalgia are well known to researchers, but its effect on social relationships is less understood. In previous research, my colleagues and I found that, during the COVID pandemic, people often turned to music that triggered nostalgic feelings when they felt lonely and lacked social contact while in lockdown. Similar patterns appeared in the selection of other leisure activities, such as classic TV shows, traditional board games and other familiar favorites. People seem to find solace in nostalgia when they are disconnected from others.
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We wondered whether nostalgia might be triggered to help people regulate their social connections and networks. So we conducted a series of studies examining whether nostalgia brings not only temporary feelings of connectedness but also motivates people to seek, and eventually achieve, connection with close others.
In our first two studies, we surveyed 449 undergraduate students from the University at Buffalo and an additional 396 U.S. adults recruited through a nationwide survey panel. Participants completed a scale measuring “nostalgia proneness,” which assessed how frequently they feel nostalgic and how important they find nostalgic experiences. They also reported the number of people in their “closest networks” (friends and loved ones it would be hard to imagine life without), “close networks” (also close but not part of the inner circle) and “less close networks” (still important but not as tightly connected).
Participants who were highly prone to nostalgia had more people in their innermost friendship circle. Further, this tendency was linked to their motivation to maintain their social network. Nostalgic people seem to be more driven to invest resources in keeping their relationships over time. This effect holds true regardless of a person’s personality traits, such as extroversion, agreeableness or emotional stability.
Past research shows that there are two major motivations surrounding our social networks: one to meet new people and the other to strengthen our existing connections. We discovered that people who are highly nostalgia-prone score high on both types of social motivations, but the effects were stronger for bolstering their existing network.
It was not clear from the data whether nostalgia caused changes in behavior and motivation, however. Perhaps having big social networks and lots of old friends simply makes people more nostalgic. In a third study, we set out to understand that possibility by analyzing data from the Netherlands that tracked the same group of 520 participants from 2013 to 2019, recording things like their nostalgia proneness and social network size.
Much like in the American surveys, people with a greater tendency for nostalgia in the Dutch group had a larger number of close social ties, that is, people whom participants reported they could talk to about important matters in their lives. But the exciting finding, for us, had to do with change over time. Nostalgia measured at an earlier time point predicted a larger network of close ties later. And by contrast, having a larger close social network was not a predictor of more nostalgic tendencies later. That suggests nostalgia could be driving changes in social behavior that promote connection.
The Dutch data also showed that close social networks tend to shrink with age. As people grow older, they are more likely to lose touch and cut ties for varied reasons, including major life events such as moving to a new city or becoming a parent. In line with that, we found that the close social networks of people with low levels of nostalgia proneness shrank over the seven years for which we had data. Interestingly, though, those who were high in nostalgia proneness maintained a relatively stable number of close networks in the same period.
Our research is the first to show that a past-oriented emotion can have substantial, long-term effect on our social relationships. We suspect that nostalgia functions as a psychological resource, helping people counteract the loss of close friendships and relationships as they age. As such, it joins many other human emotions that have evolved to serve important social functions.
So go ahead and listen to your favorite song from high school or find an episode from that TV show that made you laugh when you were young. Nostalgia may act as an emotional signal that guides us to reflect on what truly matters in our lives. The sense of potential loss and irreversibility that comes with it may serve as a powerful reminder to live fully in the present with our loved ones, toward a shared future.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about for Mind Matters? Please send suggestions to Scientific American’s Mind Matters editor Daisy Yuhas dyuhas@sciam.com.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.