Does neuroticism disrupt the psychological benefits of nostalgia? A meta-analytic test
Frankenbach and colleagues tested a plausible worry about nostalgia. The research on it reports benefits to the sense of self, to feeling life has meaning and to social connection, but people high in neuroticism, being prone to negative feeling, might be expected to find looking back painful rather than restorative. Pooling the raw data from nineteen experiments covering more than three and a half thousand participants, they found no such moderation. The benefits of induced nostalgia appeared for people high and low in neuroticism alike, whether the three kinds of benefit were analysed together or separately. This kind of analysis, using individual participant data rather than published summaries, is the stronger form of meta-analysis, and a null result on a moderator is more informative here than usual because it was well powered to find one. This vault cites it whenever nostalgia is treated as risky for people who tend towards low mood.
Frankenbach and colleagues tested a plausible worry about nostalgia. The research on it reports benefits to the sense of self, to feeling life has meaning and to social connection, but people high in neuroticism, being prone to negative feeling, might be expected to find looking back painful rather than restorative. Pooling the raw data from nineteen experiments covering more than three and a half thousand participants, they found no such moderation. The benefits of induced nostalgia appeared for people high and low in neuroticism alike, whether the three kinds of benefit were analysed together or separately. This kind of analysis, using individual participant data rather than published summaries, is the stronger form of meta-analysis, and a null result on a moderator is more informative here than usual because it was well powered to find one. This vault cites it whenever nostalgia is treated as risky for people who tend towards low mood.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Frankenbach, J., Wildschut, T., Juhl, J. & Sedikides, C. (2021). Meta-analytic test of whether neuroticism disrupts nostalgia's benefits. 116 functions studies and 39 affect studies, N = 3,556; robust main effects on self-esteem, optimism, meaning in life, self-continuity and social connectedness.
Where we use it
- Your Nostalgia Is Lying to You, Why We Come Back
Reliability of this reference
The link below is the right work, with one detail that does not line up. Author list and subject match exactly, but the published title is phrased as a question ('Does neuroticism disrupt the psychological benefits of nostalgia? A meta-analytic test') rather than the descriptive form in the citation. Crossref records first online publication 2 Dec 2020; 2021 issue. Worth opening before quoting a figure from it.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2276
DOI: 10.1002/per.2276