Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Nostalgia may have bona fide benefits in hard times

Research suggests that nostalgia can help people cope with dementia, grief, and even the disorientation experienced by immigrants and refugees. Nostalgia may even help people cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, ScienceNews reports. In a study published in Social, Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found when some lonely, unhappy people reminisced about better, pre-pandemic moments, they felt happier. The results suggest that nostalgia can serve as an antidote to loneliness during the pandemic, the researchers conclude. A key question, though, is if nostalgia’s benefits can persist beyond that fleeting moment of remembrance. Wildschut’s team found that nostalgia’s benefits, in terms of happiness, faded after just a day or two. But nostalgia-induced happiness persisted for a couple days when the researchers reminded people to think about that special memory. While nostalgia therapy may not be for everybody, it provides hopeful and promising results. 

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nostalgia-mental-health-benefits-hard-times-pandemic

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