BRIEF REPORT Heartwarming Memories: Nostalgia Maintains Physiological Comfort Xinyue Zhou Sun Yat-Sen University Tim Wildschut and Constantine Sedikides University of Southampton Xiaoxi Chen Sun Yat-Sen University Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets Tilburg University Nostalgia, a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, is a predominantly positive and social emotion. Recent evidence suggests that nostalgia maintains psychological comfort. Here, we propose, and document in five methodologically diverse studies, a broader homeostatic function for nostalgia that also encompasses the maintenance of physiological comfort. We show that nostalgia—an emotion with a strong connotation of warmth—is triggered by coldness. Participants reported stronger nostalgia on colder (vs. warmer) days and in a cold (vs. neutral or warm) room. Nostalgia, in turn, modulates the interoceptive feeling of temperature. Higher levels of music-evoked nostalgia predicted increased physical warmth, and participants who recalled a nostalgic (vs. ordinary autobiographical) event per- ceived ambient temperature as higher. Finally, and consistent with the close central nervous system integration of temperature and pain sensations, participants who recalled a nostalgic (vs. ordinary autobiographical) event evinced greater tolerance to noxious cold. Keywords: nostalgia, emotion, homeostasis, temperature, pain Nostalgia is experienced frequently (1–3 times a week) and virtually by everyone (Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt, & Rout- ledge, 2008; Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006), but, until recently, a coherent and consensual definition of nostalgia was lacking. Adopting a prototype approach to ad- dress this omission, Hepper, Ritchie, Sedikides, and Wildschut (in press) found that laypersons conceptualize nostalgia as a predominantly positive, social, and past-oriented emotion. In nostalgic reverie, one remembers an event from one’s past— typically a fond, personally meaningful memory such as one’s childhood or a close relationship. One often views the memory through rose-tinted glasses, misses that time or person, and may even long to return to the past. As a result, one typically feels sentimental, most often happy but with a tinge of loss and longing. These lay conceptions of nostalgia correspond with formal dictionary definitions; The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) defines nostalgia as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past” (p. 1266). Hepper et al. (in press) further found that nostalgia can be induced in both younger and older individuals by instructing them to recall an event from their past that is characterized by highly prototypical features of nostalgia (e.g., “sentimental,” “love,” “longing,” “rose-tinted memories,” “childhood,” “family”). This prototype-based nostalgia induction was equally effective as an established induction which instructs participants to recall “a nos- talgic event” from their past (Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2008; Turner, Wildschut, & Sedikides, 2012; Wild- schut et al., 2006; Zhou, Sedikides, Wildschut, & Gao, 2008; Zhou, Wildschut, Sedikides, Shi, & Feng, 2012). Thus, the manner in which “nostalgia” has been operationalized in prior investiga- tions (and in the present research) dovetails with lay conceptions of nostalgia across the age range and with formal dictionary definitions of the term. 1 1 The term “nostalgia” is a compound of the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain, relentless longing). It was coined by the 17th-century Swiss physician Johanes Hofer to describe the adverse symptoms of Swiss mercenaries serving European monarchs. For most of its intellectual history, nostalgia has been considered a negative and maladaptive emotion (McCann, 1941), but current theoretical and em- pirical treatises of nostalgia have explored its predominantly positive and social nature, as well as its adaptive psychological functions (Sedikides et al., 2008; Sedikides, Wildschut, Routledge, Arndt, & Zhou, 2009). This article was published Online First March 5, 2012. Xinyue Zhou and Xiaoxi Chen, Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China; Tim Wildschut and Constantine Sedikides, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom; Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets, Clinical Psychology Section, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. This research was supported by grants from the Key Program and General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (91124004 and 31171002), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (2008B080701041), 985-3 Research Pro- gram of Sun Yat-Sen University (90026-3284000), and the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant RES-000-23-3110). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xinyue Zhou, Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China. E-mail: zhouxyue@mail.sysu.edu.cn Emotion © 2012 American Psychological Association 2012, Vol. 12, No. 4, 678 – 684 1528-3542/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027236 678