By: Chelsea A. Reid-Short

CReid-ShortChelsea Reid-Short is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the College of Charleston. She is a social psychologist who studies interpersonal relationships and the self. Her research focuses on how individuals form and maintain relationships, including nostalgia.

Thanksgiving is all about gathering with your loved ones. Many of us travel great lengths to be with our relatives over this holiday weekend, and many of us spend the holiday reliving stories from Thanksgivings past. Your grandparents may tell you about what Thanksgivings were like when they were kids. You’ll laugh about funny incidents from previous holidays. You’ll compare this year’s meal to last year’s spread. All of this feels great. You might even call it the “warm and fuzzies.” That’s the power of nostalgia for you.

Thanksgiving-dinner

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Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for your valued past events and experiences. Typically when individuals are asked to report about a time for which they feel nostalgic, the events they describe involve close others.1 While nostalgia can be aroused in many ways, scents, like that of a freshly baked pumpkin pie, are particularly adept at eliciting nostalgia due to the close links between scent, memory, and emotion. In research I conducted with collaborators at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Southampton, individuals sampled a variety of scented oils (e.g., pumpkin pie spice, apple pie), reported how nostalgic the scents made them feel, and responded to questions assessing their current psychological state. To the extent that the scents made them feel more nostalgic, the individuals experienced greater positive emotions, optimism, and self-esteem. These individuals felt that their lives had more meaning and they felt more connected to their pasts, which helps maintain a sense of identity. They also felt more connected to their loved ones.2 Other psychological research has found similar benefits of nostalgia, and research has found that feeling nostalgic can help counter loneliness.3

The nature of nostalgia makes holidays ripe for nostalgic experiences, and your current holiday experiences may become times for which you are nostalgic later on. You’re forming happy memories with your family while the scents of delicious foods waft through the air, and this can benefit you in more ways than you might expect. When you gather with your families during the approaching holiday weekend, make sure you really breathe it all in.

1 Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 91, 975-993.

2 Reid, C. A., Green, J. D., Wildschut, T., & Sedikides, C. (2015). Scent-evoked nostalgia. Memory, 23, 157-166.

3 Zhou, X., Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., & Gao, D. (2008). Counteracting loneliness: On the restorative function of nostalgia. Psychological Science, 19, 1023-1029.