How Nostalgic Are You?
How often the past calls you back, and what it gives you when it does
In the seventeenth century nostalgia was a medical diagnosis, a homesickness blamed for wasting soldiers far from home. Research over the last twenty years has turned that around: for most people it is a warm, slightly bittersweet emotion that turns up when they feel lonely or flat, and tends to leave them feeling more connected and more certain that their life means something. This test measures how often it visits you and what it does for you when it comes.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Nostalgia here means a sentimental longing for your own past - people, places, moments you lived - not an interest in history or old times in general.
What it measures
The first bar is nostalgia proneness: how often you feel nostalgic and how much it matters to you, as measured by the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. The other two cover what nostalgia does for you, drawn from research on its functions: feeling connected to people, and feeling that your life hangs together. It differs from the past-oriented side of time perspective, which is a general attitude to your past, and from rumination, which circles problems.
Based on: Southampton Nostalgia Scale (Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides & Wildschut, 2008) and the functions of nostalgia (Wildschut et al., 2006)
Possible results
Nostalgia proneness
How often nostalgia visits you and how much it matters to you.
Connection
Whether your memories make you feel closer to the people in them.
Meaning and continuity
Whether your past helps you feel that your life hangs together and means something.
Common questions
Is nostalgia good or bad for you?
Mostly good, according to two decades of experiments. Nostalgia tends to lift mood, increase the feeling of being connected to others and make life feel more meaningful. The catch is its trigger: people turn to it when lonely or down, so it often appears next to the very feelings it helps with, which is why it was once mistaken for their cause.
Why does music make me so nostalgic?
Songs are tied to specific periods and people in your life, so they work as keys to memory. A study of music-evoked nostalgia found that songs brought back autobiographical memories and a mix of warm and bittersweet feelings, and that people who were more nostalgia-prone in general felt it more strongly from music. A high first bar here usually means songs hit you hard.
Is being nostalgic the same as living in the past?
No. In the research, nostalgia usually points forward: after nostalgic recall people report more optimism and more motivation to reconnect with others. Living in the past would show up as a high first bar together with low connection and continuity - memories that visit often but leave you more cut off. If that is your pattern, it is worth asking what the present is missing.
Sources
- Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975
- Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2008). A blast from the past: The terror management function of nostalgia. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.11.001
- Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2008). Nostalgia: Past, present, and future. Current Directions in Psychological Science. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00595.x
- Barrett, F. S., Grimm, K. J., Robins, R. W., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Janata, P. (2010). Music-evoked nostalgia: Affect, memory, and personality. Emotion. doi:10.1037/a0019006
An honest note Only the first bar corresponds to the published Southampton Nostalgia Scale, which gives a single score; the other two are related constructs from research on what nostalgia does, not validated factors of that scale. All items are Quinthea's own wording, so scores are not comparable with published norms. Much of the evidence comes from one research network and from short lab experiments. This is not a mental health measure: if longing for the past comes with lasting low mood, talk to a professional.