Nostalgia

Design can encourage people to feel nostalgic, using images, objects, or scents, for example.  Abeyta and Juhl’s work, building on previous studies, “hypothesized that nostalgia, a bittersweet emotion that entails reflecting sentimentally on the past, helps restore meaning for lonely people. . . . Results [of two studies conducted] supported the hypothesis: The relation between loneliness and meaning deficits was reduced among nostalgic individuals and this was driven by the fact that nostalgia (whether measured or experimentally induced) was linked with greater meaning for highly lonely individuals.”

Andrew Abeyta and Jabob Juhl. 2023. “Nostalgia Restores Meaning in Life for Lonely People.”  Emotion, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1791-1795, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001190