Time capsule: Nostalgia shields psychological wellbeing from limited time horizons.

Nostalgia is a bittersweet-albeit predominantly positive-self-relevant and social emotion that arises from reflecting on fond and meaningful autobiographical memories. Nostalgia might facilitate successful aging by serving as a socioemotional selectivity strategy in the face of limited time horizons. Four studies tested the role of nostalgia in maintaining psychological wellbeing across the adult life span and across differing time perspectives. In Study 1, community adults (N = 443, age 18-91) completed measures of nostalgia proneness and 6 psychological wellbeing dimensions. Age was more positively related to wellbeing for those high than low on nostalgia proneness: High-nostalgic individuals showed a maintenance or increase in psychological wellbeing with age, whereas low-nostalgic individuals did not. In Study 2 (N = 35, age 18-25), experimentally inducing a limited time perspective-a core trigger of socioemotional selectivity-in young adults prompted greater nostalgia. In Study 3 (N = 93, age 18-33) and Study 4 (N = 376, age 18-55), experimentally inducing a limited time perspective reduced some aspects of wellbeing among those who recalled an ordinary (Study 3) or lucky (Study 4) autobiographical memory, but this effect was eliminated among those who recalled a nostalgic memory. Nostalgia buffers perceptions of limited time and facilitates the maintenance of psychological wellbeing across the adult life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Creative terror management: creativity as a facilitator of cultural exploration after mortality salience.

Research indicates that people respond to the elicitation of death thoughts by dogmatically defending their cultural worldviews. The current research examines the potential for conditions of creativity, a construct associated with open-mindedness, to promote a more explorative reaction to the threat of death thoughts. In Studies 1 and 2, thoughts of death or a control topic were activated and then participants engaged in either a creative or a control task. In Study 3, thoughts of death or a control topic were activated and then participants were presented with information suggesting that creativity is or is not culturally valued. After these conditions, social, intellectual, and environmental exploration (Study 1) and cultural worldview exploration (Studies 2 and 3) were measured. Results indicated that both engaging in a creative task and being informed that creativity is culturally valued facilitated exploration in response to thinking about death. Conceptual and applied implications are discussed.