Tamerlan Tserenov

ENG21003

Professor Zayas

Annotated Bibliography 3&4

03.26.2025

 

Source 3:

The Bibliographic Entry:

Lammers, J., Alaukik, A., & Baldwin, M. (2025). When longing goes wrong: Nostalgia can

cause a preference for harmful aspects of the past. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 25, e70000. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.70000

 

The Summary:

In their work, Joris Lammers, Abhay Alaukik, and Matthew Baldwin explain that nostalgia, despite its positive role in personal well-being, can have negative consequences for society. When people experience nostalgia, they tend to idealize the past, including its harmful aspects, which leads to resistance to social reform. The problem is that people associate the past with positive emotions, which causes them to perceive even negative aspects of the past as good and find justifications for outdated social norms.

 

The authors conducted six studies and found that nostalgia contributes to opposition to smoking bans in public places, even among non-smokers; skepticism about modern car safety systems and a preference for less safe models of the past; support for traditional gender roles and a rejection of progress in gender equality; increased acceptance of politically incorrect humor.

 

The Connection:

This study shows that nostalgia has a negative effect on society because people idealize the old way of life, not daring to make new, improved decisions. This is closely related to the topic in my research, as it shows why nostalgia can be harmful at different scales.

 

Quotes & Terms:

“Furthermore, our findings point to an irrationality that was not made explicit in existing work: we found that the effects even extend to people who should understand the undesirabil-ity of a return to the past the most. For example, nostalgia even increased the desire to undo public-smoking bans among non-smokers and ex-smokers who should realize the deleterious consequences of second-hand smoking (Studies 1 and 5). Similarly, it reduced the perceived impor-tance of car-safety among previous victims of traffic accidents, who know the importance of safety in traffic (Studies 2 and 5). Finally, nostalgia even led self-identified feminists (who realize the problems of sexism more than others) to find sexist jokes funny. In other words, rather than ampli-fying or catalyzing existing desires, nostalgia seems to have the potential to lead people away from their a priori preferences.” (p. 14)

 

Six studies presented correlational and experimental evidence that nostalgia can lead people to value negative aspects of the past and therefore advocate a return to or restoration of these adverse elements, with negative implications for health, safety, and well-being. Nostalgia can lead peo-ple to oppose regulations against smoking in public, despite their health-benefits (Studies 1 and5), to discount advances in car safety (Studies 2 and 5), to oppose gender equality and advocate traditional sexist arrangements (Studies 3, 5, and 6), and to enjoy humor that disparages and undermines the well-being of members of disadvantages groups (Study 4). (p. 14)

 

 

 

 

Source 4:

The Bibliographic Entry:

Abramov, R. N. (2012). Time and space of nostalgia. Sociological Journal, (4), 6–23.

https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/vremya-i-prostranstvo-nostalgii/viewer

 

The Summary:

In his article, R.N. Abramov analyzes theoretical approaches to the study of nostalgia. The author emphasizes that the growing interest in the past and collective memory makes nostalgia an important element in the interaction of individual and public consciousness. The author explores how nostalgia became a social phenomenon that over time began to change social principles of life. The work explains the historical growth of the concept of nostalgia, how it works as phenomena of collective memory and commercialization of it. Abramov views nostalgia as a way to cope with uncertainty and social disorientation. It can serve as both a means of emotional adaptation and a tool for political manipulation, creating distorted images of the past.

The Connection:

This source is essential for my research since it explains the historical component of nostalgia, also explaining how the phenomenon of nostalgia affects life from different angles, for example, how nostalgia has become part of commerce and it forms a “selective memory” that romanticizes certain historical periods, ignoring their negative aspects.

 

Quotes & Terms:

“Researchers agree on the reasons for the growth of nostalgic sentiments in societies of the second half of the twentieth century, regardless of their history, cultural characteristics, economic and political regime. Urbanization and industrial development have led to increased migration and the separation of entire generations from the traditional way of life. The citizens who have “lost” the past are looking for a refuge in nostalgia for the “good old days”, protecting them from the stresses of life in a modern city, thus overcoming the identity crisis. It can be said that nostalgia softened the transition from haft (community) to Gesse haft (society), that is, from the ”

culture of nationality” and “spiritual community” to the “culture of statehood”, where there is no organic unity [26: 36]. Accelerated modernization, accompanied by the transformation of most political, social and economic institutions, has led significant social and ethnic groups to the need for rapid social adaptation to changed living conditions. Against this background, the recent past involuntarily seemed like a quiet bay of stability and predictable social order, which also contributed to the growth of nostalgic sentiments that served as emotional anesthesia in a situation of uncertainty generated by the modernization processes.” (p. 4)

 

“….we must note that the difficulty of a relevant interpretation of this phenomenon is connected with its complexity: it manifests itself as internal emotional experiences, simultaneously serves to form and maintain social identity, and is also a convenient object of exploitation by media structures. In addition, nostalgia becomes an element of political ideologies and takes the form of utopian thinking, combining real memories, dreams of a lost past and cliched images of the past inspired by the media.” (p. 11)