Naming the Mad Mind
Petteri Pietikainen in Madness, 2015
Today, nostalgia is considered to be a harmless longing for home or for the places and times that were once dear to us. But from the late seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, nostalgia was a difficult, sometimes even fatal disease (algia means ‘pain’). For about 100 years, nostalgia (Heimweh or ‘homesickness’) was known as the ‘Swiss illness’ (Schweizerkrankheit), because it was introduced to the medical community by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer (1669–1752) with his dissertation on nostalgia (Dissertatio medica de Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe, 1688). Hofer believed that the Swiss living in the mountains were especially prone to nostalgia. Carl von Linnaeus included nostalgia in his classification of mental diseases in the mid-eighteenth century, as did the Scottish physician William Cullen some decades later. Nostalgia assumed a more dramatic form in the eighteenth century when some servant girls had such an intense longing for home that they set fire to the houses of their masters or killed the children of their host families. As a consequence of these tragic events, nostalgia became a term used in forensic medicine. In criminal courts, nostalgia could be seen both as the cause of the criminal act and as a medical justification for the mitigation of sentence, if it could be demonstrated that the defendant was in the state of nostalgia when the crime was committed (Bunke 2009).
Affective Brain–Computer Interfacing and Methods for Affective State Detection
Chang S. Nam, Anton Nijholt, Fabien Lotte in Brain–Computer Interfaces Handbook, 2018
By way of contrast, the GEMS is composed of a set of text labels describing different regions of the affective space (Zentner et al. 2008; Vuoskoski and Eerola 2011). Individuals are asked to select specific labels that correspond to the regions matching how they wish to report their affective state. For example, they may be asked to select labels corresponding to feelings of nostalgia after hearing a piece of music. This allows for more immediate understanding by participants in an experiment but requires the GEMS to be translated into a language the participant is able to understand.
Chemosensory Disorders and Nutrition
Alan R. Hirsch in Nutrition and Sensation, 2023
If one defines nostalgia as a yearning for an idealized past, the bittersweet nature of it becomes clearer. One can never return to his past, it never truly existed. And the present reality, no matter how good, can never be as good as an ideal—which nostalgia has created. Thus, the saying, “you can’t go home again.”
Effect of nostalgia as a motivational force for depressed students to seek professional psychological help
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2022
Syed Ali Hussain, Saleem Alhabash
Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion wherein positive emotions dominate. However, in the case of depression, the situation is rather complicated because of the negativity bias that an individual with depression experience when reminiscing the past. Such a situation, often only delay the much-needed treatment and worsen the situation from mild to severe levels of depression, resulting in social withdrawal, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Although the present study did not find a direct effect of message appeal on improving behavioral intention to contact counseling center, the mediation analysis suggests that boosting positive emotions may build a more positive attitude toward counseling center. This finding is particularly important because individuals with severe depression often exhibit even fewer intentions to seek help.
The Long-Term Effects of Military Deployments and Their Relation with the Quality of Life of Dutch Veterans
Published in Military Behavioral Health, 2021
Interestingly, longing for the deployment, that was stronger related to positive sentiments about the deployment, was also negatively related to one’s quality of life. Nostalgia may account for that effect. Nostalgia is a self-conscious and a social emotion (Routledge et al., 2013; Sedikides et al., 2015; Sedikides & Wildschut, 2018; Wildschut et al., 2006). Besides that the attachment to others plays an important role in nostalgic recollection, this emotion will be often elicited when one is in contact with other persons to whom one is closely related. However, other triggers, such as discomforting states, may elicit nostalgia as well. The function of nostalgia is predominantly that it serves to counter discomforting states and restore psychological homeostasis. As such, nostalgia is a coping resource. It positively affects self-positivity, self-esteem, and optimism. In addition, it strengthens perceptions of psychological growth and it helps in finding and sustaining meaning in life (Wildschut et al., 2006). Thus, a plausible explanation for the inverse relation between longing for past deployments and quality of life may be that longing may elicit nostalgic positive memories, such as the satisfaction and pride one derived from having been deployed or brotherhood and trust among veterans with whom one worked on the mission. When not feeling well, veterans may long for one’s past mission. In doing so, nostalgia may serve as a coping mechanism in that the thought about positive aspects of momentous experiences in the past may serve to make one feel better.
“Then and Now”: Examining the Impact of Temporal Focus on Persuasive Messages across Seniors and Young Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2021
The current research makes two major contributions to the extant literature on aging, time perception, and consumer behavior. First, we add to the theoretical knowledge base by examining the unique influence of temporal focus on persuasive advertisements between older and younger adults. Further, we examine the potential mechanisms underlying this relationship by investigating the mediating impact of nostalgia and affective attitudes toward different time periods. Secondly, through an applied lens, we investigate the practical ramifications of this phenomenon by investigating older and younger adults’ behavioral intentions in a scenario where competing alternatives are presented with varying temporal foci. This research may be beneficial to marketers and policy makers looking to gain a better understanding of how people’s desires and motives shift as they get older, and how these changes impact their preferences and choices for different products and services. This knowledge may assist in designing products and services that utilize people’s unique proclivities toward varying temporal periods to tap into emotional preferences and behavioral inclinations.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Amygdala
- Cognitive Bias
- Emotion
- Melancholia
- Brain
- Depression
- Sentimentality
- Rosy Retrospection
- Stimulus
- Homesickness