What elicits music-evoked nostalgia? An exploratory study among college students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to further explore how song (a) familiarity, (b) enjoyment, (c) autobiographical salience, and (d) emotional arousal as well as a person’s (e) current mood state and (f) nostalgia proneness predicted music-evoked nostalgia. This study also measured the strength of the relationship between self-reports of arousal and electrodermal activity (EDA). Thirty people were recruited from a sample of university students using a multilevel model with repeated measures design. Procedures included listening to personalized playlists to elicit feelings of nostalgia while EDA collected changes in emotional arousal. Participants then answered questions about song familiarity, enjoyment, autobiographical salience, and arousal. Results indicated autobiographical salience was the best predictor of music-evoked nostalgia while holding all other variables constant. Mean skin conductance level ([Formula: see text]) did not correlate with self-reports of arousal. Therefore, this study supports the hypothesis that autobiographical salience predicted music-evoked nostalgia; however, this study did not support the hypothesis of a relationship between self-reports of arousal and EDA. Future research should continue to explore the influence of arousal on nostalgia.