They're Playing Our Song

                We all have one. Be it one that brings back memories of a time that has long gone by, of a love that was supposed to last forever – or on a happier note, one that fills in the words until you can find the right words to say. A perfect background music for that car ride home – windows rolled down and speakers blaring. We all have an idea of the perfect song for that perfect moment.

                Nostalgia is an “emo” person’s best friend – it’s what keeps them coming back for more. It’s the poison that’s slowly killing them (so they say). It’s the high that makes people keep living in the past. It’s also very widespread – triggered by almost anything, from love letters to movies to songs. According to various researches (Batcho, 2007; Sedikides, Wildschut & Baden 2004; in Barrett et al., 2010), nostalgia has been labeled as bittersweet, involving a mixture of sadness and wistful joy. Being in a bad mood while listening to music also triggers nostalgia.

                Before going any further, it might be a good idea to introduce context-level constructs and person-level constructs. The former involves a person’s relationship with a particular song – how familiar they are with it or the degree to which it’s associated with personal memory. For example, I know the lyrics to Big Girls don’t Cry by Fergie and I know it was playing during one memorable car ride along Filinvest. When I listen to that song now, I can proudly say that I feel nauseous and not nostalgic. And no, I’m not bitter nor defensive. On the other hand, person-level constructs are more about how prone a person is to experience nostalgia and how people are different in certain personality traits.

                The current experiment by Barrett et al. (2010) focused on the interaction between context-level and person-level constructs. They presented participants with 30 clips of Pop, hip-hop and R&B songs from the Apple iTunes music store (too bad they didn’t specify the titles), making sure that these were released when the participants were between 7 and 19 years of age. Mood and nostalgia proneness were assessed using two scales, while nostalgia, arousal and familiarity were also taken into account.

                After around 3 pages of regression analysis, they found that participants report feeling more nostalgic if the song is more autobiographically salient, familiar, arousing and if it evoked more positive and negative emotions. Contrary to popular belief, positive emotions greatly influenced the feeling of nostalgia, with love being the most popular of those emotions. Sadness came in a close second. Nostalgia proneness and negative moods were important predictors of nostalgia (no surprises there).

                I suppose living in the past isn’t as bad as it seems. So next time you’re up for a long drive to nowhere in particular, go on rewind and bring back the days (and love) long gone by. 

Just because she's performing right now in Araneta. And here I am. But that's not my song.

 This is:

What's yours?

Reference: Barrett et al. (2010). Music-evoked Nostalgia: Affect, Memory and Personality. Emotion, 10(3), 390-403.