Jacob Juhl

Who they are

The nostalgia literature grew quickly and mostly out of one research programme, which is a good reason to want it pooled before anything is built on it. The 2021 meta-analysis, first-authored by Julius Frankenbach, did that: 116 studies of nostalgia's functions and 39 of its affective consequences, across 3,556 participants. Robust main effects came out for self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life, self-continuity and social connectedness.

The paper also tested a specific moderator, whether neuroticism disrupts those benefits, which is the useful kind of question to ask of an emotional-regulation claim. Nostalgia is offered as a resource, and the obvious worry is that it works least well for the people who most need it.

Juhl is a co-author and is named here as one. The work in this area is habitually credited to the senior names on the programme rather than to the first author of a given paper, which is a pattern this site corrects wherever it appears.

Key papers

Frankenbach, J., Wildschut, T., Juhl, J., & Sedikides, C. (2021). Meta-analysis of nostalgia's functions and affective consequences. Co-author. One hundred and sixteen functions studies and thirty-nine affect studies, 3,556 participants in total. Robust main effects on self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life, self-continuity and social connectedness, with neuroticism tested as a moderator of the benefits.

Key ideas

Nostalgia has measurable functions, and the pooled evidence names them: self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life, self-continuity and social connectedness.

Pooling matters more than usual here, because most of the primary work comes from a single programme and the studies are not independent of each other in the way a naive reading assumes.

Whether the benefits hold for everyone is a separate question from whether they exist, and the 2021 paper is one of the few places it has been asked directly.

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