Psychologists like to study various aspects of human behaviour.

Research psychologists often seem to go off the deep end in trying to find something to study.

I know we have all at some point heard the focus of such research only to shake our heads in bewilderment. Why would someone fund the proverbial project to study the mating habits of fruit flies, right?

On the other hand, sometimes you come across some piece of research literature that really looks interesting. One day I discovered a series of studies conducted by researchers at the University of Southampton, in England, and the University of Missouri, in the United States. They were writing this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about the content, triggers, and functions of nostalgia. Nostalgia is something that most people at some time or another experience. It is a sentimental longing for the past, and it's different than simply longing for one's home during an absence from it; that is homesickness. When people fall into nostalgic reverie, they often find themselves thinking about their relationships with family members, friends, and lovers or remembering significant periods of life.

In a related matter, two narrative patterns are evident in people's self talk, as they seek to make sense out of the stories in their lives. One is called a "redemption sequence" and the other is called a "contamination sequence". The redemption story progresses from a negative situation to a positive or triumphant one. The contamination story moves from positive emotions to negative ones.

Nostalgic narratives are more often redemptive in nature and filled with attributions of past beauty, delight, joy, contentment, goodness, happiness, and love. Ironically, the most common trigger of nostalgia is negative emotional tone ? i.e., feeling lonely or sad. A negative mood state is more often the trigger to nostalgia than a specific and relatively more transient emotion.

One might ask, "So what?" What function does nostalgia serve for people?

To understand that, it helps to understand what role emotions play in our lives to begin with. Generally speaking, emotions serve to point out what is important. They get our attention and organise our energy toward adapting to situations.

Specifically, nostalgia generates positive feelings, increases positive self-regard and bolsters social bonds. Life transitions lead to changes in social settings. People graduate from high school, and then from college, and they move on. Brothers and sisters grow up in a family, and then family members move away. People change jobs.

Sometimes people find themselves feeling lonely, sad, disappointed, or a bit melancholy, and it's during those times they tend to think back on previous times in their lives, recalling their connection to others with warmth.

Every once in awhile I think of my kids and then I start missing them. It makes me feel sad. So it was the other day that I had been triggered into nostalgic reverie, and then out of nowhere I remembered the girl next door when I was in the fourth grade.

We had just moved into this new house; I was the new kid on the block. I came out of my new front door and looked around. There she was, roller-skating on a large, cement pad in her grandparents' front yard. She actually lived around the corner, but for some reason she was next door on that day.

I fell in love with her at first sight, and I stayed in love with her for three years. We used to walk home from the bus stop together, and she would hit me over the head with her lunch bucket. I asked her to go with me to the sixth grade dance, and then I danced with everybody else but her.

Let's face it; we were doomed.

Yet, when I remembered her, I recalled this nice person who also attended our same church and sang in a quartet with her cousins. I found myself wishing her good things and wondering what had ever become of her life. Then I thought about all the good things I had experienced in mine, and I marvelled that so much time had passed since she skated and I watched. It made me feel good. That's nostalgia. Does nostalgia mean that one is dissatisfied with the present? No. It means one is making good sense of the past and reaffirming what is important to oneself in the present.