Did you skip your last high school reunion? If so, you may want to reconsider when the next anniversary rolls around. The experience could lead to increased feelings of gratitude, according to a new study led by Jeffrey Green , Ph.D., a professor of psychology in Virginia Commonwealth University's College of Humanities and Sciences .
That's because engaging in nostalgic experiences – or even just listening to nostalgic music, or drifting into a nostalgic reverie – can strengthen feelings of social connection, which boosts gratitude.
"There was a tiny bit of research out there suggesting that nostalgia and gratitude were linked causally, but also there was some question of what's driving it," Green said. "And that mechanism turned out to be feelings of social connectedness."
Nostalgia hasn't always been viewed as a benign trip down memory lane. In the 1600s, Green said, a Swiss medical student coined the term "nostalgia," calling it a "brain disease of demonic origin." That negative view, based on the student's study of a group of homesick mercenaries, persisted among psychologists for several hundred years.
For Green, however, meditating on positive or sentimental memories has always been a fruitful experience. His formal interest in nostalgia emerged around 15 years ago, when he was inspired to join his former Ph.D. advisor in his research into nostalgia.
"I would frequently wax nostalgic or engage in nostalgic reverie. And then just kind of a natural outgrowth was gratitude," said Green, who has organized high school, college and even fifth-grade reunions. "My thinking was, I wonder if there's something there? Is it just me, or is that kind of an inherent feature of nostalgia?"
Clearly, Green didn't view his tendency toward nostalgia as demonic – but why did it bring him such intense feelings of gratitude?
To find out, Green and his co-authors conducted several studies among different populations, with their findings published recently in Personality and Individual Differences, the journal of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences.
In two of the studies, participants answered questionnaires about their feelings of nostalgia, gratitude and their levels of social connection. In another study, participants listened to a nostalgic song and then rated their feelings of social connectedness and gratitude.
The studies led the researchers to one overarching conclusion: Remembering nostalgic moments causes people to consider their social ties, which promotes gratitude for their lives and experience. In other words, nostalgia leads to gratitude through feelings of social connection.
Previous research has found that overall psychological well-being can be enhanced by fostering gratitude, and Green suggests that purposefully engaging in nostalgic triggers such as listening to music, looking at photographs or smelling wistful scents could help bolster that effect.
But those feelings of gratitude can be harder to come by in an era of social-media-driven comparison, Green said, when people feel pressured to measure up to artificial standards.
"I think if you have to boil it down to one thing – happiness, life satisfaction, meaning, all these related concepts – you usually get back to quality connections with other human beings," he said. "Gratitude is one of these meta approaches, where it's focusing on what you have rather than what you don't have."
For Green, the research enhances what he already knew – that his nostalgic reveries serve an important purpose.
"When I think back on these different eras, whether it's high school, or graduate school, or the time I lived in Japan, or my first academic gig at a tiny school in southern California," he said, "I feel blessed."
