{"id":4609,"date":"2025-05-08T19:11:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T19:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=4609"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:41:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:41:39","slug":"nostalgias-lures-and-perils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/nostalgias-lures-and-perils\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia\u2019s Lures and Perils"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher <\/a><\/p>\r\n

During crises and periods of loneliness, nostalgia surges, and it\u2019s happening again. Surveys have found that American men in particular are suffering a \u201cfriendship recession.\u201d By turning to nostalgia as a salve, though, people\u2014consciously or not\u2014embrace a distorted view of the past, which may hurt their personal and professional relationships.<\/p>\r\n

Academy of Management Scholar Jessica Methot<\/a> of Rutgers University and the University of Exeter said that nostalgia is an ambivalent emotion that was commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to appear in various incarnations in the arts, politics, and the workplace. For example, nostalgia plays a role in the debate about remote vs. in-office work.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWe were witnessing a lot of people who were longing for what they remembered through rose-colored glasses about their in-office experience pre-COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d Methot said. \u201cThey were forgetting all of the bad stuff, all the awkward stuff, all of the annoying stuff, and they were thinking, \u2018I really miss seeing my coworkers\u2019 or \u2018I really miss this or that aspect of being at work.\u2019<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWe started digging into this ambivalent emotion of nostalgia and this sense of longing for this time before and how it was once,\u201d she said.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cAdaptively, if people were able to address it and cope with that nostalgia\u2014if they were redirecting their attention to the present and reframing it as, \u2018That was great, but I\u2019m going to put that behind me; I’m going to try to adapt to this new normal in a productive way,\u2019 then they were able to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

However, Methot found that there are people who get psychologically stuck in nostalgia to the point that they aren\u2019t able to move forward with their lives. That hurt them both personally and professionally.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cSome people I\u2019ve spoken to got really stuck in a liminal space\u2014they were stuck in the past where they couldn\u2019t get out of the mindset of, \u2018This is how it used to be,\u2019 and continuing to have that in mind was maladaptive to how they were coping, how they were thinking about their daily work experiences, how they were interacting with other colleagues, and how they were doing their work as well,\u201d Methot said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

A sample of Methot\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n