An Empirical Study Of Nostalgia And Subjective Well-being

Nostalgia, is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, Recentevidence suggests that there is a significant relationship between nostalgia andemotion.Nostalgia contains not only people and things which had made us happy,butalso things not very happy.And nostalgia has both positive and negative psychologicalfunctioning. In this study, through the method of empirical investigation, we are toexplore the structure of nostalgia.Through an analysis of the influence of nostalgia onlife satisfaction and emotional well-being, as well as understanding whether the effectis mediated by perceived social support and coping styles and moderated by sense ofpersonal growth,we conclude that:(1) By the nature of the content, nostalgic can be divided into positive nostalgiaand negative nostalgia.(2) Nostalgic has a significant impact on positive emotions as well as negativeemotions.Higher positive nostalgia predicts higher life satisfaction and emotionalwell-being,while higher negative nostalgia predicts lower life satisfaction andemotional well-being.(3) Perceived social support mediates the effect positive nostalgia has on lifesatisfaction, and emotional well-being.Perceived social support and negative copingstyle mediates the effect negative nostalgia has on life satisfaction and emotionalwell-being.(4) Sense of personal growth moderated the effect positive nostalgia onemotional well-being, and moderated the effect negative nostalgia has on emotionalwell-being.(5) Individuals of different birth of year have different level of nostalgia;individuals of different gender or age or with different level of education havedifferent level of subjective well-being; The four types samples devided by differentnostalgia and happiness are different in terms of gender, perceived social support,negative coping and optimism.