Abstract
An experiment examined the potency of nostalgia—a sentimental longing for one’s past—to facilitate detection of death-related stimuli, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral techniques (i.e., judgmental accuracy, reaction times). We hypothesized and found that, at the neural level, nostalgic (relative to control) participants evinced more intense activation in right amygdala in response to death-related (vs. neutral) words. We also hypothesized and found that, at the behavioral level, nostalgic (relative to control) participants manifested greater accuracy in judging whether two death-related (vs. neutral) words belonged in the same category. Exploratory analyses indicated that nostalgic (relative to control) participants did not show faster reaction times to death-related (vs. neutral) words. In all, nostalgia appeared to aid in death threat detection. We consider implications for the relevant literatures.
Highlights
This research is the first to show that nostalgia likely modulates the processing of information about death
The fMRI results indicated that nostalgia intensified activity in brain regions mainly involved in threat detection, as a function of mortality salience
Increased amygdala activation marks the automatic detection of threatening stimuli[14,24], whereas damage to amygdala impairs the ability to detect potential threat[27]
Summary
During the Word Relationship Task, participants viewed death-related, neutral, and mixed (control) word pairs. Category) to death-related and neutral word pairs (excluding control pairs). We conducted a 2 (nostalgia: nostalgia, control) × 2 words (death-related, neutral) Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on accuracy. We conducted a 2 (nostalgia: nostalgia, control) × 2 words (death-related, neutral) ANOVA on reaction times of correct responses in the Word Relationship Task.
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