Abstract
Collective nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion that reflects sentimental longing for valued aspects of the past of one’s group. Given that conservatism is typically associated with a general desire to preserve the societal status quo or return society to its traditional way of being, nostalgia has been theorized to be characteristic of those on the political right (i.e., conservatives). In the current work, we proposed and tested the hypothesis that collective nostalgia is experienced by both conservatives and liberals, but the content of their nostalgizing differs. Across three studies in three socio-political contexts—United States (Study 1, MTurk, N = 352), Canada (Study 2, student sample, N = 154), and England (Study 3, online panel, N = 2,345)—we found that both conservatives and liberals experienced collective nostalgia for a more homogenous and open society. However, conservatives experienced more homogeneity-focused collective nostalgia, whereas liberals experienced more openness-focused collective nostalgia. Replicating previous findings, homogeneity-focused nostalgia emerged as a positive, whereas openness-focused nostalgia emerged as a negative, predictor of intergroup attitudes. The results have both theoretical and practical significance for understanding political attitudes and behaviors. To the point, variance in the conservative and liberal political agendas is, in part, a function of a difference in their respective predisposition to nostalgize about and thus desire the return of a particular aspect of the in-group’s past.
Highlights
As humanity fumbles toward modernity, a sense of loss and change have grown in many societies (Duyvendak, 2011)
We investigated the potential role of different types of collective nostalgia in explaining the link between political orientation and intergroup attitudes (Duckitt, 2001; Jost et al, 2008)
Replicating effects observed by Wohl et al (2020b), homogeneity-focused nostalgia was positively related to social distance and negatively related to warm feelings towards outgroups, whereas openness-focused nostalgia showed an opposite results pattern
Summary
As humanity fumbles toward modernity, a sense of loss and change have grown in many societies (Duyvendak, 2011). Some people feel that a cherished social group to which they belong (their ingroup) is losing connection with its past (Smeekes and Verkuyten, 2015) Such a feeling of collective discontinuity (i.e., disconnection) is aversive. As such, when group members come to believe that their group is becoming discontinuous, they often turn back to the past, as it provides an anchor in the midst of uncertainty (Wohl et al, 2020a). This is Political Orientation Predicts Collective Nostalgia typically accomplished psychologically via collective nostalgic reverie (i.e., wistful reflection)—a group-based emotion that helps bridge the past with the present (Wildschut et al, 2014; Sedikides and Wildschut, 2019; Wohl et al, 2020b). By reliving the past through collective nostalgia, the group member symbolically rekindles bonds with the ingroup’s past, a process that can confer psychological equanimity
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