The Art of Manliness - #353： Nostalgia — Its Benefits and Downsides

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now picture this

00:00:18.720 you're sitting in your car mindlessly staring off in the distance when a memory from your

00:00:22.460 childhood pops into your mind could be anything christmas playing catch with your dad whatever

00:00:26.240 initially thinking about this memory makes you feel pretty happy but then you start

00:00:29.460 feeling kind of sad if you experience that feeling of happiness tinged with sadness when remembering

00:00:33.760 something you've experienced nostalgia my guest today is a psychologist who has spent his career

00:00:38.100 researching this oft overlooked emotion his name is clay rutledge and he's professor of psychology at

00:00:42.420 the north dakota state university and today on the show clay takes us deep into the psychology of

00:00:46.460 nostalgia we begin by discussing what exactly nostalgia is what it feels like and what induces

00:00:50.960 nostalgic feelings clay then delves into the benefits of nostalgia such as alleviating depression

00:00:54.900 and loneliness and providing meaning in your life we then get into the downsides of nostalgia trying

00:00:58.900 to feel nostalgic too much and how to avoid that we end our conversation discussing why we can feel

00:01:03.020 nostalgic for time periods we didn't even experience ourselves and the possible benefits of that type of

00:01:07.880 nostalgia after the show's over you'll be wanting to bust out old photo albums to take a trip down

00:01:11.480 memory lane and after you've done that check out our show notes at aom.is slash nostalgia

00:01:15.760 clay rutledge welcome to the show thanks for having me so you are a psychologist who has spent a lot of time

00:01:25.200 researching nostalgia which is you know you don't see a lot of papers about nostalgia you see a lot

00:01:32.000 about like the big five right or things like that but so what got you researching the psychology of

00:01:37.380 nostalgia so when i was in graduate school i was really more broadly interested in how humans navigate

00:01:45.880 time but what i mean by that is compared to other animals we have this unique capacity for temporal

00:01:52.340 thoughts so we can think about the past we can think about the future we can run different sorts

00:01:57.440 of simulations about these different points in time and so i was just broadly interested in you know

00:02:02.780 the implications of being an animal that has to grapple with the awareness of time and in fact most of my

00:02:10.120 work or a lot of it i should say has focused on the ability to think about the future and the

00:02:17.080 implications of that especially the existential implications of being able to think about

00:02:21.820 future mortality and so when i was in graduate school doing this work i was actually working on

00:02:28.780 a chapter for a book on temporal consciousness with my phd advisor and we started toying around with

00:02:37.740 how people use the past you know how they reflect on the past which we do in many ways of course but

00:02:44.960 what seemed really interesting to us was this possibility that people have this ability to think

00:02:53.480 about the future and that can be exciting of course because we can think about goals and things we're

00:02:58.700 looking forward to but it can also be threatening because it's a reminder of our vulnerability and

00:03:04.020 frailty and so then we started thinking well maybe people actually turn to the past as a way

00:03:11.620 to combat some of their insecurities and worries about the future and and particularly that they

00:03:19.640 you know they might bring to mind nostalgic memories that make them feel warm and safe and meaningful

00:03:26.500 as a way to cope with some of their anxieties about future concerns and so really that you know that's

00:03:33.960 how i got into it was not just a fixation on nostalgia but just more broadly how people

00:03:38.940 kind of deal with being um temporal and and ultimately existential animals yeah i'd love to

00:03:46.260 talk about that idea of thinking about our temporal future but let's talk about this nostalgia all right

00:03:51.200 so i think we've we all can describe nostalgia we've all experienced it so in your research how

00:03:58.580 how do you guys describe nostalgia because with with psychology i think it really you have to get

00:04:02.760 more precise besides just oh i have this like fond memory so what exactly how do you describe

00:04:08.560 nostalgia and how is it different from say just remembering any other memory from your past

00:04:13.160 that's an excellent distinction because when we first started doing this you know we actually

00:04:19.320 wanted to see if our you know kind of more theoretical or scholarly conception of nostalgia did in fact

00:04:28.840 align with more lay you know conceptions of nostalgia you know and this becomes important for a number of

00:04:36.220 reasons but you know the dictionary definition to start is that nostalgia is a sentimental or wistful

00:04:41.920 longing for the past and when we look at nostalgia we often define it in that way so in some of the

00:04:49.200 studies we've done for example we provide if we're going to ask people to bring to mind and detail and

00:04:55.920 nostalgic memory we often provide them with that dictionary definition beforehand just to get you know just

00:05:01.580 to get a sense that you know everyone kind of knows where we're coming from but we've also you know you

00:05:07.280 know done a number of studies looking at lay or you know just more common conceptions of nostalgia and they

00:05:13.460 converge quite nicely with this more scholarly approach and in a nutshell i would say the consensus

00:05:19.780 seems to be that nostalgic memories are these are these memories that people find particularly

00:05:27.060 meaningful or sentimental and what distinguishes them from from more ordinary memories seems to be

00:05:35.800 that that potency of meaning so you can ask people for example to say hey think about a happy memory or

00:05:43.540 positive memory or sad memory or an ordinary memory from your past and sometimes they'll bring to mind a

00:05:50.640 memory that would also you know constitute nostalgia they can distinguish the two and you can find

00:05:56.540 distinctions when you have when you more surgically tell people to specifically think of a nostalgic

00:06:02.760 memory it does something a little bit different than if you just say hey think about a happy or

00:06:07.580 pleasant memory yeah i think one of the ways you found a lot of people describing is like it's feeling

00:06:11.920 both sad and happy about the memory yeah yeah yeah so that's a good point because if you say just think

00:06:19.200 of a happy memory or a positive memory a lot of times that'll be somewhat superficially positive so you

00:06:27.300 can imagine you know lots of things just being positive memories like oh i went to the movies or ate a piece

00:06:32.780 cake um but what seems to distinguish nostalgia in part is this more what we call emotional ambivalence

00:06:40.900 memories which is there's this tinge of sadness or loss and that's part of what i think makes nostalgia

00:06:46.480 memories special is they're not just ordinary everyday happy events right there might be little things

00:06:53.060 that you enjoy every day but nostalgia seems to be more of those momentous or meaningful memories and

00:06:59.400 oftentimes you know the people you know don't don't really think about this a lot of times these more meaningful

00:07:05.480 memories have this this tinge of uh of negative affect or negative emotion in them because they're

00:07:12.840 so special um because you know meaningful memories are often complex and because you know when we think

00:07:19.460 about them where we're aware of that you know that sense of how these are these are rare it's kind of

00:07:25.280 special events right and then also i mean the word nostalgia it comes from greek which meant homesickness so

00:07:30.840 you're kind of feeling like this longing for home which could be the past in this case yeah definitely

00:07:37.580 i mean there is this there is this sense of you know something that you're that you're longing or you

00:07:43.600 know that you're longing for as opposed to just something that is just more kind of superficially

00:07:49.680 like transiently pleasurable right you know you talked to about the history of nostalgia there was a time

00:07:56.340 and sort of the history of psychology where nostalgia was seen as a sickness like that's not a good thing

00:08:03.380 to have was it because they didn't really fine-tune nostalgia and they were just they were you know

00:08:08.880 conflating it with some other like just like a sadness i mean what was going why did they think

00:08:13.700 nostalgia was bad at some point in the history of psychology so there's a couple of possibilities i mean

00:08:20.820 you know to start it's a little bit difficult often to do these sort of historical

00:08:26.940 analyses because you know we're not there and we don't know exactly so we're you're doing almost like

00:08:34.260 a forensic sort of analysis of text and you know writing and what we think you know people were

00:08:40.580 were thinking at the time but there seems to be a couple possibilities that you touched on one

00:08:47.240 and that is that you know they were just an oversimplification of this idea of homesickness

00:08:54.500 and so what people were doing is they were conflating the these negative emotional and distressing

00:09:03.420 you know feelings that people were having that might have actually you know i'm sure we'll touch on

00:09:09.360 this later might have actually triggered or instigated nostalgia as a coping resource you know

00:09:15.560 conflating that with the actual nostalgia memory which might actually have been the response to

00:09:23.060 those to those negative states so that's you know that's one possibility is you know in modern

00:09:27.540 science we would you know we use words like the difference between correlation and causation for

00:09:34.800 instance are these negative feelings correlated with nostalgia um and is that why we you know that's why

00:09:41.440 they conflated the two in addition to that you know a second possibility is that over time we have

00:09:49.800 started to change the definition of what nostalgia is and that we started to ourselves distinguish it

00:10:00.800 from homesickness now what i you know even if that's true and you know that could be part of the picture

00:10:06.260 i would i would just note that that doesn't mean nostalgia is a new or recent phenomenon it just

00:10:13.140 means that we have developed new language or we are we are approaching it conceptually differently i mean

00:10:20.060 i think there's there's no reason to believe that nostalgia as we commonly think of it now is

00:10:26.400 something that's emerged in you know in recent decades you know as long as our species has been an

00:10:32.380 animal that grapples with with the awareness of time and and concerns about meaning i suspect we've

00:10:40.120 always been nostalgic so nostalgia is sort of a wistfulness of happy memories meaningful memories

00:10:45.800 what is like what is the content of nostalgic thoughts i mean is it pretty much the same uh in

00:10:52.240 your that you've seen things pop up over and over again in your relation in your in your research

00:10:56.080 yes it is so and and in fact there's been some you know some studies in recent years really looking

00:11:03.060 cross-culturally at different nations and age groups different parts of the world suggesting that

00:11:11.740 there is a common theme of nostalgia or common characteristics that you know populate nostalgic

00:11:20.460 memories and they include um a heavy emphasis on social bonds or relationships so certainly you

00:11:28.960 could have nostalgic memories that are more solitary that are you doing you know something completely by

00:11:34.740 yourself but that would be more atypical than than a social memory that involves close others friends

00:11:42.820 family romantic partners um so the sociality of nostalgia seems really really big also we find that

00:11:49.820 nostalgia often contains what you know people refer to as momentous life events so you can be

00:11:57.260 nostalgic for anything of course even very you know even things that other people might find trivial you

00:12:02.560 might find momentous but you do see these common cultural themes about rites of passage like graduation

00:12:09.800 you know kind of religious traditions and getting married for instance having children and you also see

00:12:16.700 themes related to holidays or you know these kind of cultural rituals are are big and of course a lot of

00:12:25.740 these things also implicate the social nature that i just touched on so momentous life events seem to be a big part

00:12:32.320 of it and also a self-focus and and what i mean by that is nostalgic memories at least when we talk about

00:12:41.700 personal nostalgia um are are seen through the lens of you as the protagonist right these are your memories

00:12:49.560 right so you the self plays a central role in them which doesn't take away from the social aspect i mean

00:12:55.380 people tend to see social versus self as being in opposition but that's not true at all because a lot of the

00:13:02.580 a lot of the things we do in life of course involve us thinking about our primary role in them but they

00:13:08.200 still implicate relationships and finally i would say nostalgic memories are sort of populated by

00:13:15.900 this what we call a redemptive sequence you know events that have a redemptive sequence and so that

00:13:23.720 where the negative and positive elements come in a little bit more is that a lot of times nostalgic

00:13:28.880 memories involve some sort of hardship or loss or pain or difficulty or uncertainty that is subsequently

00:13:37.380 that you subsequently triumph over and so they're really kind of these redemptive stories which

00:13:44.600 again kind of distinguishes them from other other memories so you said you mentioned that uh the content

00:13:51.220 of our nostalgic thoughts are or there's a lot of relationships and the self but like what happened

00:13:55.880 what's going on when people are nostalgic for a period of time that they didn't even exist right like

00:14:02.160 people like i watch you know it's a wonderful life and you're like oh i wish i could go back to

00:14:08.400 then and when i live in fictional bedford falls when everything was great um and if you it's the same

00:14:14.480 sort of nostalgic feeling that i have when i think about my own childhood so what's going on there when

00:14:20.700 you're nostalgic for a era that you didn't even experience yourself so one thing to you know to start

00:14:28.180 with is that i think it's important to distinguish um a lot of what i've been talking about which we

00:14:34.300 would call personal nostalgia from what you're now referencing which we would call historical

00:14:39.820 nostalgia and the two can have some some overlap and and and we can get into that but you know a lot

00:14:47.300 of the research we've done has been on these like personal memories that are from your own life

00:14:52.300 experiences so there is this other phenomenon of historical nostalgia which is exactly what you know

00:14:58.120 which is an affinity towards some aspects or periods of the past that you know may have been long

00:15:05.240 before you were ever born and i you know and i certainly think there is some something about that

00:15:11.980 that's that's distinct but i also think it sort of builds on the same psychological scaffolding

00:15:18.120 as personal nostalgia for you know just for uh you know a quick example you can imagine um you know

00:15:25.680 like you said being nostalgic for for the for certain movies or ideas that were long before you were born

00:15:32.100 but if you extract the themes out of out of that they might connect in meaningful ways to your own

00:15:38.200 to your own life experiences and the way you became introduced to those historical ideas might have

00:15:45.620 important personal connections as well so i know that i have some nostalgia for for older movies

00:15:52.880 that i experienced for the first time with either you know older relatives or or my father and so

00:16:00.940 there is still this connection to my own personal life experiences but they were introduced to me

00:16:08.040 these older ideas were introduced to me by people that i you know people from my own life and you know

00:16:14.040 an interesting possibility is that these forms of historical nostalgia are part of what connect us culturally

00:16:22.240 across time and our ability to weave these into our own personal memories and personal life narratives

00:16:29.000 might help be you know part of what connects us to to older generations i think you know another good

00:16:36.060 example if this seems a little a little abstract is like my son who wasn't born until 2001

00:16:43.600 has a lot of interest in movies from the 1980s and so we've you know particularly kind of action you know the action movie genre so i've

00:16:57.140 shown him everything from rambo to terminator to you know to aliens to to rocky to the rocky movies and all

00:17:06.140 these action movies predator you know all these action movies from the 80s that were way before he was born

00:17:10.520 and he really really likes them and there are themes that are just enduring that you know a lot of

00:17:16.960 teenage boys like violent action movies but i have no doubt too that part of that will be a connection

00:17:22.040 with me as he gets older you know he'll be thinking well i gotta watch that stuff with my dad and that was

00:17:27.060 and that was really cool so i do think there is this blending between the historical and the personal if

00:17:36.220 if that makes sense no it makes perfect sense because like i i'm i don't think it nostalgic for

00:17:41.020 like the world war ii era and it's probably because both my grandfathers fought in world war ii and so

00:17:46.440 as a kid they showed me their pictures from the war that was my so that's my connection to that era

00:17:52.320 yeah yeah no definitely and you know and also a lot of you know just kind of fashion either fashion

00:17:57.820 trends or certain um certain ideas that you might you might like the the the peak time of those ideas

00:18:06.780 might have been you know in times past before you're aborted so you know that can be part of it

00:18:12.200 too is you just happen to have a particular hobby or a particular area of interest like say you're

00:18:16.440 interested in muscle cars for whatever reason you might say well there was a period that was sort of

00:18:20.860 the peak for that time but my guess is a lot of times certainly not always i'm sure but my guess

00:18:27.060 is a lot of times if you dug a little bit deeper you would find a personal link so maybe you your dad

00:18:34.720 had a muscle car and you just thought that was really cool like he was the greatest like or he showed

00:18:39.640 like you said he showed you picture you know your grandparents or somebody showed you pictures from

00:18:43.820 they were from when they were young so i think a lot of times even though we feel sort of

00:18:48.000 disconnected personally from historical events there is a real family or social connection

00:18:55.040 somewhere you know somewhere beneath beneath the surface so you've done research and found that

00:19:00.560 nostalgia is something that's not just unique to people living in western industrialized countries

00:19:05.200 it's it's cross-cultural you also did research on sort of trying to figure out how we feel

00:19:10.720 nostalgically at different times in our life i'm curious are there certain points in our life where we feel

00:19:16.620 more nostalgic or less nostalgic so this is a question that certainly needs a lot more data to be

00:19:25.820 appropriately answered we do have you know one you know one data set that provides some suggestive

00:19:34.940 hits now let me start by saying the differences between age groups aren't large so what we find is in

00:19:44.300 in general across across age people are nostalgic there are individual differences you know which i'm

00:19:52.540 sure we'll talk about that because there is kind of a personality trait related to nostalgia but people of all

00:19:58.520 ages seem to regularly engage in nostalgia now that being said you know you know i was hinting at this

00:20:05.560 potential interesting small difference we have some preliminary evidence that

00:20:11.420 nostalgia may you know nostalgia may be higher among um young adults and then you know some people in

00:20:19.620 their 20s for instance and then kind of start to decrease slightly in middle age and then begin to

00:20:28.220 increase in again as people get older and in one possibility and i you know i say this with caution because

00:20:37.920 we don't know for sure one possibility is that this is somehow mapping on to you know kind of normal

00:20:45.380 trends um across the life kind of lifespan trends and so what i mean by that is when you're a young adult you

00:20:52.760 have a lot of uncertainty right you're trying to figure out what to do you're trying to you know

00:20:57.120 potentially find a mate become more of an adult and you know be independent and with that uncertainty

00:21:03.840 might provoke a more longing for nostalgia as a way to you know kind of regulate these you know these

00:21:10.960 experiences now once you settle into middle age and again this is just a simplification people differ

00:21:17.800 obviously you might expect more of a period of stability right you have a job you have a career

00:21:23.920 you're doing your thing you have a family you're you know you're just plugging away and so you might

00:21:28.800 need nostalgia less and then as you start to get a little bit older you're starting to have life

00:21:35.540 transitions again either it's retirement or you know of course eventually people start to you start to

00:21:41.360 lose family members and parents and and friends um there are other experiences in life as you as you

00:21:47.540 get old in terms of declining declining health so that's just one possibility is that trends and

00:21:55.660 nostalgia across age somehow follow trend general lifespan trends and just what we would call

00:22:04.220 discontinuity yeah i can see that like in my own this is anecdotal this is i'm throwing in some

00:22:10.340 anecdotal evidence into the the mix here but like yeah i read as a young adult i'd get really

00:22:15.000 like the christmas spirit right it's very nostalgic uh now as like i'm a 30 something dad of kids like

00:22:21.880 i don't like i don't feel that much at the holidays and you're like i just got to get through this

00:22:25.720 because there's a lot to do yeah um and i always try to like i'm gonna like i'm gonna i'm gonna

00:22:30.520 recapture that feeling somehow and i never can um so i guess i have to wait until i'm in my 60s or 70s

00:22:37.240 well you know again that's a good anecdote um and i you know i think there's truth to that but what i

00:22:43.400 would also add is and the reason i think these trends might be really really small of is because of

00:22:49.800 course anytime you just look broadly and say something as broad as across the lifespan

00:22:55.340 within that is a whole host of different experiences that are you know completely

00:23:01.900 diverse and so just as you might say well these are general general cohort trends you would also

00:23:10.040 predict using that same um that same reasoning that as any individual personally experiences

00:23:17.520 distress or discontinuity or change in life they you know might um ratchet up their own

00:23:26.200 nostalgia so for instance you can imagine you know being 40 and saying hey you know i'm actually

00:23:35.600 a lot more nostalgic than maybe i would have been because i just got a divorce or i just you know or

00:23:41.540 i just lost a parent or something like that and it's triggered this this compensatory effort to

00:23:48.200 revisit meaningful past memories and you know to reflect on these things that give me some sense of

00:23:53.860 stability that i know who i am so i think it's definitely more surgical to focus on the individual

00:24:00.800 level than it is the broader cohort level but still at that that lifespan piece i think is is

00:24:06.700 interesting and there's some and it might help us understand some general trends you know across age

00:24:12.500 so you've kind of been referencing this throughout while you were talking explain giving your answers

00:24:16.800 but like why do we experience nostalgia right like there's you know we know kind of have an idea of why

00:24:22.280 we experience happiness why we experience sadness so why do we have this feeling a sort of mixed

00:24:28.780 sadness and happiness for the past what do you think's going on there based on your research

00:24:34.240 based on my research well first i'll say that you know nostalgia is compared to happiness and sadness

00:24:39.540 it's what we call a complex self-relevant emotion so it's not just a simple you know simple

00:24:47.420 positive or negative affect that's you know as we've discussed it has this more

00:24:52.480 you know ambivalent and complex signature emotional signature and what you know what we found is there

00:24:59.260 there seems to be at least two general classes of what we'd call triggers of nostalgia or

00:25:04.140 reasons that people become nostalgic one is just kind of simple sense what we call sensory inputs

00:25:11.400 which and these are just the reminders of the past that you experience so certain times of year you

00:25:19.100 might get that you know experience the sensation of all the weather's changing and i'm starting and

00:25:25.160 all that reminds me of when i was a kid right or i smell you know there's a certain food you know a

00:25:31.360 certain type of smell that you know that reminds me of things from my childhood or in music would be a

00:25:37.400 big sensory input right i heard this song on the radio from when i that was you know one of my favorite

00:25:42.440 songs in high school and it brings me back so those are what we call very direct you know triggers of

00:25:48.340 nostalgia and you know that seems totally obvious what i find more fascinating is the second class

00:25:53.780 of triggers which we call psychological threats and i think that's more interesting because one it's

00:26:00.600 less obvious and two it really starts to reveal nostalgia's psychological functions and and so what

00:26:09.340 we find is people are more likely to feel nostalgic in times in which they're experiencing negative

00:26:14.780 emotions particularly uh emotions relevant to social to social issues and issues of meaning so when

00:26:23.340 people feel lonely they become more nostalgic and you know before i mentioned the correlation versus

00:26:28.920 causation angle and this is one of the things that we've tried to address is to distinguish

00:26:34.740 you know correlation from causation so we've now done a number of experiments to and demonstrated that

00:26:40.900 it is in fact negative emotions that trigger nostalgia as opposed to nostalgia triggering

00:26:46.820 negative emotions so when you induce sadness in the laboratory or you induce negative affect in the

00:26:54.700 laboratory you find that people subsequently feel more nostalgic when you induce a feeling of social

00:27:01.580 exclusion or ostracism or loneliness in the laboratory you find that people subsequently feel more

00:27:07.140 nostalgic when you induce some sense of meaninglessness or you know provoke people to question the meaningfulness

00:27:13.340 of their life they they subsequently respond with a heightened sense of nostalgia so the second class

00:27:19.560 of triggers seems to be these negative psychological states that people are turning nostalgia to as a way to

00:27:27.660 regulate you know negative emotions and experiences so on the psychological triggers is the nostalgia just serving as a

00:27:34.740 balm right just like helping you feel better because you're sad or does it actually cause people to

00:27:40.040 take action to improve their situation right so like you feel lonely okay i feel nostalgic for the time in high

00:27:46.080 school and i had friends and everything was great that can that can just you could just settle there like i feel

00:27:51.280 better you don't do anything about it or does nostalgia actually okay let me do something now so i can have

00:27:55.520 friends now that's actually been one of the most surprising and interesting developments in the

00:28:02.700 research i think because originally to be honest i thought it was the former that nostalgia just kind

00:28:09.260 of made you feel good so and that and that has value in itself right so you feel you're experiencing

00:28:15.740 loneliness or a feeling of rejection or meaninglessness and so you you kind of retreat to these memories in

00:28:21.320 the past that make you feel good and it just and that's an and that and that might be beneficial

00:28:26.860 right because if you feel good then you might be then there might be something else that comes

00:28:33.340 into play that you're you know you're sort of more motivated to to pursue as just as a function of

00:28:40.000 getting a mood boost and that's what you know that was kind of the original thinking is nostalgia just

00:28:44.600 restores these these positive feelings or reduces these negative feelings but then what we found

00:28:51.020 more recently and i think is is is very fascinating is that nostalgia didn't just make people feel good

00:28:58.860 it actually mobilizes them or motivates them and so it's kind of changed my my thinking on nostalgia

00:29:07.020 because i used to see nostalgia as this very past focused experience right after all you're thinking

00:29:13.300 about thinking about the past so it seems like you're kind of retreating backwards into the past to feel

00:29:18.720 better about the present but i think a better description based on some of our recent research

00:29:23.920 is nostalgia is you pulling the past to the present not you retreating to the past like you you're

00:29:29.740 pulling the past to the present as a way to energize or mobilize yourself and so we've now you know

00:29:35.540 published a number of studies showing that when people feel nostalgic they actually indicate and

00:29:41.700 behaviorally demonstrate a greater interest in meeting new people of trying new things of being

00:29:48.660 more helpful to others feeling more energetic feeling more youthful and so there does it does seem to

00:29:55.780 be the case that nostalgia isn't just a way to sort of kind of restore your feelings it does seem to have

00:30:04.160 motivational power so you mentioned earlier this idea of self-continuity what is that first and then how

00:30:11.700 does nostalgia help with that so self-continuity is the sense that even though i of course change

00:30:19.540 over time right i have different life experiences and i grow and develop that i have some sense of i'm

00:30:26.020 i have a state you know i have some stable sense itself that i'm you know at some deeper level i'm the

00:30:30.940 same person i've always been as opposed to i don't have any like stable sense itself and i'm all over the place

00:30:38.640 there seems to be you know some positive psychological benefits to having some sense

00:30:44.980 of this sort of stability of self across time or kind of connection to self across time and so the

00:30:51.360 way nostalgia boosts this the self continuity is it seems to be a way that people can bring to mind

00:30:58.080 these experiences in life and weave them into a meaningful personal self-story or self-narrative

00:31:03.720 that help that helps them feel like they have some kind of authentic or enduring you know

00:31:08.640 sense of self regardless of what what happens or regardless of what happens to them in life

00:31:15.440 gotcha and i thought the really interesting section this is what kick-started your your entire research

00:31:20.760 about nostalgia is that nostalgia and sort of existential meaning right um so what is it about

00:31:28.620 you know feeling that existential angst right like my life is meaningless that you know makes people

00:31:35.460 nostalgic or and what causes people to you know some people to be nostalgic while others like they

00:31:40.480 go into the void like they look into the abyss and they never come back so what's the difference

00:31:45.800 between those two types of people yeah that that second question is is really is really interesting so

00:31:52.120 first you know i'll you know i'll say that life is full of experiences that you know kind of challenge

00:32:00.020 or our sense of of meaning i mean you know uh we all experience loss and suffering and the world feels

00:32:09.040 unfair and ultimately regardless of all the things we do to navigate the you know life even if we have

00:32:17.320 even best case scenario we know that ultimately we're going to get older frailer weaker

00:32:22.100 everyone we love is going to die and so are we um and so at the general level nostalgia

00:32:27.780 seems to be a way that people you know can kind of build the storehouse of meaning a warehouse of

00:32:33.940 meaning and you know our bank of meaning and when people are experiencing these states that you know

00:32:40.220 these are these life events that sort of question the meaningfulness or cause them to you know to

00:32:46.460 think about the potential meaninglessness of their existence they can withdraw from the bank

00:32:52.000 these meaningful memories and be like oh yeah but i've had these events in life and and so i know

00:32:57.260 i've despite what's going on now or despite what what's going to happen to me i've had good experiences i've

00:33:03.720 had my you know i've had my my meaning um and so that seems to be that seems to be important not just

00:33:11.460 for allowing people to take some perspective about what's meaningful in their life but also you know

00:33:17.300 touching on a previous point about motivation it seems to be kind of an experience that that

00:33:24.520 instigates the you know kind of further efforts for meaning and what i mean by that is you can imagine

00:33:30.540 say well like life feels meaningless right now and that challenges your sense of confidence right

00:33:37.140 and then you think back nostalgically and you're like yeah but i've had all these successes and

00:33:42.760 great experiences in my life that made me feel meaningful and if i had them back then even

00:33:48.360 though i'm going through a hard time right now maybe i can have them again so nostalgia seems to

00:33:53.020 boost your existential confidence too that you can you know that you what you might be going through

00:33:59.940 right now is tough but there's there's going to be future opportunities um for meaning we you know

00:34:06.040 sometimes we refer to this as as anticipatory nostalgia which is a lot of times we plan we

00:34:13.180 have goals and ideas that we're we're hoping for in the future because we know that we had meaningful

00:34:19.360 versions of them in the past i think vacations is a is a very good example so you might be there

00:34:24.800 might be things on your bucket list that you really really want to do right and you want to do them in

00:34:29.600 part because you think they'll be meaningful like oh i've always wanted to you know to go to

00:34:34.780 yellowstone or to you know go to alaska or whatever it is that you that you that you want to do

00:34:40.860 but part of the reason you think that might be meaningful is because at some level you can you have

00:34:47.460 memories from your past that you had you know you might have not done those exact same things but

00:34:51.560 you remember hey i remember when my parents took us here and that was really awesome and that was

00:34:56.280 really special and now i want to recreate that or make a new version of that and so i think that

00:35:01.460 that's how nostalgia helps us deal with the existential meaninglessness uh issue that's

00:35:07.280 like that's why i stress myself out every christmas because i'm like i'm creating memories here people

00:35:12.020 that is the but you're touching on an important i think an important issue that we need we need to

00:35:18.360 think about which is you can overdo it right or you can fixate too much on the importance of something

00:35:25.960 that robs you of just living and enjoying the more experiential component of it so i do think there

00:35:33.460 are some you know it's not just the case that this is always positive right we have to we have to think

00:35:38.360 about that that's the that's the message of christmas vacation with jerry chase right try too hard so

00:35:44.760 yeah so what causes some people to you know go to nostalgia as a as a way to as a reservoir for this

00:35:51.980 existential void while others don't do that and they you know might go to a really really bad place

00:35:57.480 yeah so i think there's a few a few possibilities one is we know that their nostalgia does have trait

00:36:05.240 like characteristics and what i mean about that is just like some people are more neurotic than others

00:36:10.500 and some people are more extroverted than others um some people are more nostalgic than others so there

00:36:16.080 is just kind of a stable personality characteristic of nostalgia that people vary on like

00:36:21.500 all of us can experience nostalgia and have some understanding of it but some of us are more

00:36:28.160 nostalgic than others and so that seems to be um one dimension which is some people just um and it's

00:36:35.380 not to say that the people who aren't nostalgic are gonna just retreat to the void experience you know

00:36:39.520 embrace the void um but but it might indicate um that nostalgia is not is not as likely of a strategy

00:36:48.240 for them when they're grappling with meaning they might turn to other things for meaning but maybe

00:36:52.420 not as much nostalgia so that's one part of it um another part of it is i think just individual

00:36:58.700 differences and and people's um personal comfort with you know the the void so to speak so there does

00:37:06.480 seem to you know one of the other areas of research i'm i'm involved in right now is looking at

00:37:11.940 individual differences in the need for meaning now at some level like just like the need to belong

00:37:18.880 or you know our social needs everyone has some you know some level of need for meaning everyone needs

00:37:25.360 to feel important and that their life has some kind of value or purpose at some level but that people

00:37:30.640 also seem to differ differ on this some people are really really high in this need some of the research

00:37:36.260 that you know some of the recent research we've done on this suggests for instance that people that are

00:37:40.740 high in need for meaning tend to be more religious and how and hold more supernatural beliefs for example

00:37:47.260 and so one possibility is that you know there are just some people that are more comfortable with the

00:37:54.520 idea that there is no ultimate meaning or there is no true true meaning beyond the meaning that i might

00:38:02.240 make and so some people just might be more comfortable um you know or might be find it less distressing

00:38:08.340 to look into the void now the third thing that you know third and final thing i'd note which you

00:38:13.600 touched on a little bit too is that's distinct from from meaningless that might be um bad for people's

00:38:23.180 mental health as you know as you kind of hinted at because some people might stare into the void and be

00:38:27.740 like hey my life is meaningless whatever i there's still a new star wars movie coming out i still like

00:38:34.920 you know i still like starbucks and you know then you know some people just might be a little bit more

00:38:40.240 comfortable with that right right but i think the problem is a lot of people aren't and if they don't

00:38:45.860 have you know i'd say the majority of people aren't you know in fact i think it's a very small percentage

00:38:51.400 of the population that's probably fully able to embrace without any real um psychological distress the you know

00:39:02.140 the the total potential and significance of their existence um so for everyone else who who um who

00:39:11.140 isn't like that who wants meaning if you know if not nostalgia or if not something else i mean there

00:39:15.240 are people do experience one of the predictors of the depression is a lack of meaning one of the

00:39:21.280 predictors of suicide is a lack of meaning one of the predictors of addiction and other forms of

00:39:27.760 of risky and problematic behavior is the feeling that life is life is um meaningless so there does

00:39:35.140 seem to be this kind of pathological component of a lack of meaning um and i don't know you know i don't

00:39:40.840 know what the answer is um for those people um because we largely haven't studied nostalgia from that kind

00:39:50.860 of more clinical perspective we've studied that as more just a normal life experience and and that

00:39:55.440 actually touches on an important issue um that i like to bring up a lot and i think we need to do a

00:40:00.980 better job of of of being transparent about in psychology which is it's a lot easier to identify

00:40:07.560 and study phenomena or people or experiences as they naturally exist and and then to kind of

00:40:15.420 experimentally move that around a little bit just to understand a phenomena like nostalgia it's a lot

00:40:21.240 harder to develop interventions that can dramatically change people if that makes sense yeah that makes

00:40:28.980 sense um you also highlight research that nostalgia can actually have physiological response i mean i've

00:40:35.240 seen this research before where they'll go to a nursing home and they'll make the nursing home pretty 0.97

00:40:40.060 much look like how it looked when the residents were in their prime in their 20s and like instead of

00:40:46.600 shuffling the old people like they get a little pep in their step so i mean that's another benefit but 1.00

00:40:50.980 i'm curious in your research have you found any like is there a dark side to nostalgia like we've been

00:40:55.720 talking about the benefits are there any downsides to experiencing nostalgia so i think there certainly

00:41:00.360 are possible downsides one would be an over use of nostalgia now we don't really we haven't really

00:41:08.820 figured this out in terms of research but it you know it seems to be you know pretty obvious

00:41:16.100 at some level that almost anything that's good for you or can be bad for you or almost anything

00:41:22.560 that's good for you can be bad for you right so you know use the parallel use the parallel example

00:41:27.540 of exercise like everyone would say hey exercise is good for you but we know you know that people

00:41:32.260 some people over exercise or compulsively exercise and so you know i'd say similarly if you are

00:41:39.700 if you're so fixated on nostalgia that it's preventing you from living in you know the present or engaging in

00:41:51.240 other future-oriented opportunities or experiences then that would be you know that would be a problem

00:41:59.260 in addition to that you know there is some some recent research on what we would call group or

00:42:06.940 collective nostalgia which you know which seems to have some positive and negative benefits and what

00:42:13.060 i mean by that is you can imagine nostalgia for a group you're part of right so um you can say hey

00:42:20.460 i have nostalgia for i have nostalgia for being an american and nostalgia for um being you know when i was in

00:42:27.560 college or something like that and that has you know that has many benefits because group level

00:42:33.620 nostalgia makes you feel connected and part of something bigger than yourself right it gives you

00:42:39.680 some commitment to your in group but the problem of course is that it also runs the risk of um

00:42:49.140 making you less um focused or less open to out groups or to you know people that aren't part of that

00:42:57.880 group and so i think one of the things that you know that warrants further investigation is the

00:43:03.980 extent to which a nostalgia can while increasing some kind of group harmony perhaps a collective

00:43:11.040 nostalgia could also um contribute to to intergroup conflict and there just isn't a lot of you know

00:43:19.060 like i said there's research on the benefits of of group nostalgia but there isn't a there isn't

00:43:23.540 really much research on the potential consequences so as i was reading your book i was thinking okay

00:43:28.760 there's a lot of these great benefits nostalgia i want i want some more nostalgia in my life have you

00:43:34.200 all found like are there ways you can i mean you've been able to induce nostalgia in the lab by making

00:43:39.360 people feel sad it's so funny that that's what you guys do we're gonna make you feel lonely and

00:43:45.960 excluded and sad so we can test this thing but are there i mean you mentioned the sort of the direct

00:43:52.060 triggers right music pictures etc i mean are there ones that you find that you know without fail

00:43:58.540 typically induce some sort of nostalgic feeling in people music seems to be really big it seemed and

00:44:04.300 you know there there might be different reasons why just from an experimental or laboratory point of

00:44:10.860 view music might be a really good induction just because people like it and it's engaging i mean a lot

00:44:16.340 of times when you do these studies in the lab you're bringing people in and you know it's not the

00:44:20.880 most interesting thing for them to do but you give them a chance to listen to music that makes them

00:44:28.720 nostalgic or oftentimes in our you know to make sure we have good controls in our control conditions

00:44:33.600 we also have them listen to music that they really really like or enjoy so it's equally engaging but

00:44:40.200 it's music that they've only recently only recently heard and so that way it's not you know it's not

00:44:45.860 associated with the past for them but that seems to be powerful you know so that just from the

00:44:50.700 engagement part of it but even beyond the laboratory i would i would propose that music is a particularly

00:44:57.540 powerful um source of nostalgia because it seems to be that all of us have or many of us have a

00:45:05.820 almost like a soundtrack to our lives um right we can think about the times from our youth in particular

00:45:13.500 where there were certain bands we liked in fact that you know there's some research on this that

00:45:19.100 people tend to favor products consumer products whether it's movies or musics that um that came

00:45:26.200 or even fashion um that came from their from their youth and that seems to be the time in which you

00:45:32.760 really start to develop these because you start to become an independent person right that's the time

00:45:37.380 when you're when you're adolescent teen and young adult that's when your identity is really forming and

00:45:42.200 you're distinguishing yourself from just being some kid in your family um you're becoming an you know

00:45:47.180 kind of an autonomous person and there's there's music associated with that right um and so for me it

00:45:53.200 would be the the you know the early 1990s right that's when i was in you know in high school and college

00:46:01.580 and so i might have a particular i like new music of uh of course but i have a particular you know

00:46:08.000 affinity towards music from the 90s who were your favorite bands from the 90s oh man you wouldn't

00:46:12.620 believe it because this is just an audio show so you can't even see it but i'm wearing a nine inch

00:46:17.400 nails shirt as we as as we speak i was a big i was a big nine inch nails man i was but i was a big um

00:46:25.420 i guess what they would what we called back then grunge and and you know alternative music so

00:46:30.940 pearl jam um sound garden allison you know i was a big allison chains fan um all those all those sorts

00:46:39.020 of band kind of rock alternative bands um you know i actually liked some and i still like um you know

00:46:45.660 kind of punk music but that was you know that kind of hit its prime um before a little bit before my

00:46:52.180 time but when i was in high school when i had you know a little bit of cash and could buy you know

00:46:58.420 cds my you know and develop my own music taste it was that you know that grunge alternative

00:47:04.600 sort of moment that's funny yeah for me it was like i listened to like ska and punk the thing is

00:47:11.480 though i don't enjoy listening to that music now as a 30 year old like i'm just like i can't no i

00:47:16.740 can't do it i've tried it i'm like i'm gonna feel nostalgic i'm gonna put in some less than jake

00:47:20.580 or some real big fish and i'm like okay no i can only do one song yeah it's so weird what do you

00:47:26.320 so what's your what do you listen to just more contemporary stuff yeah i mean the contemporary

00:47:30.520 stuff i listen to uh you know i like frank i like the pop standards like i like frank sinatra i like

00:47:35.700 i've always liked swing music sort of jazz from the 30s and 40s that's been sort of consistent from

00:47:41.620 when i was a kid until today i still like that but and then today i i do enjoy just poppy poppy pop

00:47:49.760 music pop rock music so you really are a historic when you say you're you have historical nostalgia

00:47:54.780 yeah you really do it's really weird i think and i i don't know why i think my mom might had a lot to

00:48:00.340 do with it she was you know she loved watching old movies and of course i had to watch old movies too

00:48:05.580 so it's probably because i'm nostalgic for that stuff because like that's what i grew up with

00:48:09.440 it's not because i yeah i mean i did experience it directly in an indirect way if that makes sense

00:48:14.080 yeah no i think that and you know i think that will that is an area of research that i haven't fully

00:48:19.700 jumped into but i think that that's i think that's a really really cool area i've talked about this

00:48:25.120 with some of my graduate students actually of trying to figure out this um the content the

00:48:30.260 historical continuity of nostalgia like trying to figure out a way to identify

00:48:33.960 if some of our tastes and preferences um and our nostalgia for them are linked to things that were

00:48:42.480 passed down to us from you know so if your parents listened to the beetles or the rolling stones for

00:48:49.560 instance like did that how did that influence um influence your taste i think and and and what's the

00:48:55.980 and what's the function of that i mean we're talking about music but you can imagine this in

00:48:59.980 all sorts of cultural contexts like you could imagine saying and cooking for instance we hear people

00:49:05.160 say well this is my grandma's recipe right and so i think that and oftentimes if you watch cooking

00:49:10.180 you know cooking shows or cooking documentaries which you know my wife always makes me watch 0.61

00:49:14.500 these cooking documentaries on netflix you'll see these famous chefs and they'll oh and they'll often

00:49:19.820 say yeah well when i was growing up my grandma made this or my mom made this and they might have a new

00:49:25.200 version of it but there is that um core of it and you know i think that's actually a that's actually an

00:49:31.720 important part of nostalgia that we don't think about in terms of entertainment and and and consumer

00:49:39.780 products and trends and and things like that is that a lot of times nostalgia works the best it seems

00:49:47.160 or it's the most creative when people aren't just perfectly trying to replicate something from the

00:49:52.540 past but are able to extract its core its core themes and then do something new take a new spin to it and

00:50:00.900 this happens all the time in music you can identify elements that are that are influenced by um by the

00:50:07.680 past but then they go in a new direction and i think this where you can really see this is in

00:50:11.760 in movies a lot of times in movies the difference between a nostalgia a movie that just is trying to

00:50:20.880 like bank on nostalgia in the most superficial ways oftentimes totally criticized and panned and people

00:50:27.220 hate it because they love the original so much and they just see it as a total you know people just

00:50:32.420 trying to cash in on nostalgia the movies that seem to really be able to be successful and pay

00:50:38.580 tribute or you know to the past are the ones that pull the you know pull the themes out of it that are

00:50:44.460 important and that honor and honor the past but then do something you know do something totally new

00:50:50.720 or move in a new direction right i feel like with the western genre does that really well

00:50:54.640 yeah a lot of the good modern westerns are still really good they hold up to the other one

00:50:59.240 yeah i think about you know my kids are probably going to be nostalgic for the killers because

00:51:03.060 that's what we pretty much listen to no yeah killers are great yeah i love love the killers and

00:51:07.260 they're actually doing some nostalgia like you hear some like you're listening like that's a

00:51:11.420 little bit of bruce springsteen 19 you know 80 right so it's uh they're doing the same thing

00:51:16.420 well i mean there's so much more we could talk about where can people learn more about your work

00:51:21.680 not just on nostalgia but also just the psychology of being animals that have to grapple with temporal

00:51:28.340 existence yeah so uh if you i have a website it's just clay rutledge.com so it's pretty simple

00:51:34.380 and you know i have descriptions and links to a lot of my research and and also i'm links to i've done

00:51:42.780 you know writing for you know from a number of different outlets ranging from scientific america

00:51:48.780 to the new york times to wall street journal you can see all that on my website and i i i wrote a ted ed

00:51:56.300 lesson so if you're if you want something that's like five or six minutes and you like cartoons um

00:52:02.660 i you know there's a little there's a little ted ed video i mean i think it's linked on my website so i

00:52:08.380 think that's probably the the best place to find me um i'm also on on twitter i don't you know

00:52:14.140 necessarily tweet about nostalgia per se but a lot of times about the areas of research and issues i'm

00:52:20.940 interested in fantastic well clay rutledge thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:52:24.160 yeah thank you it's been a pleasure for me as well i guess it was clay rutledge he is a psychology

00:52:28.800 professor at north dakota state university the author of the book nostalgia it's available on

00:52:32.680 amazon.com you can also find out more information about his work at clay rutledge.com also check out

00:52:38.560 our show notes at aom.is nostalgia where you can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this

00:52:43.740 topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and

00:52:59.780 advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show

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00:53:14.020 as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:53:17.920 stay manly

The Art of Manliness - November 02, 2017

#353： Nostalgia — Its Benefits and Downsides

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