In April 2020, India experienced and adjusted to a sudden, nationwide pandemic lockdown. Rather than watching the modern high-budget streaming shows, over 77 million citizens tuned their television screens to watch a re-run of the 1987 serial: Ramayan. Data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India showed that the once-forgotten channel, Doordarshan, saw a surge of viewership, further prompting the network to launch an entire channel, DD Retro, dedicated to streaming vintage content. (BARC India, 2021).
This collective behaviour was far more than just an idle pastime; it was a psychological coping mechanism. A study by Ranjan (2020) tracking public responses to these re-telecasts discovered that citizens reported a nearly 64% positive sentiment rate. The data indicates that during a period of high stress, anxiety and trauma, returning to familiar narratives served as an emotional sanctuary to soothe public uncertainty and stabilise collective mental well-being.
When the present circumstances become overwhelming, the human brain reaches back for the certainty of the past. This vulnerability is driven by specific cognitive shortcuts. Understanding how these shortcuts function explains how something as abstract as nostalgia is meticulously weaponised as a tool by consumer brands and political campaigns to influence what we buy, how we vote, and how we view the world.
Understanding Nostalgia: Rosy Retrospection Bias
At the heart of nostalgia lies the cognitive shortcut known as posy retrospection bias. This explains the tendency to remember past life events as significantly more positive and peaceful than they actually were. Our brains are naturally wired to fade out daily anxieties, minor inconveniences and negative emotions over time, leaving behind a highly filtered history (Romanelli, 2022). This bias acts as a judgment of sorts; it frames our messy present as inferior to the idealised past.
During the lockdown of 2020, I curated a playlist on Spotify during those stressful times. Now, when I play any of those songs, I get this giddy and warm feeling even though the past was anything but. This is rosy retrospection at work, filtering out the negatives and leaving behind an idealised rosy remembrance of the past.
Read More: Fashion and Nostalgia: Why We Are Drawn to Retro and Vintage Styles
The Affect Heuristic
Once the memory primes us to remember the past through this warm lens, our mental shortcuts, heuristics, take over. The affect heuristic is a decision-making shortcut where individuals make choices, form opinions and take risks purely based on their immediate emotions rather than logical and objective data. When a customer citizen faces a stressful present event, their mind seeks comfort to reduce the negative emotions. Nostalgia acts as an instant anchor, providing a safe mental space and relief. However, relying heavily on the heuristic has been shown to cloud rational thinking and judgment on risky life choices simply because the stimulus makes them feel safe in the moment (Skagerlund et al., 2020).
Social Identity Theory
Nostalgia can also be experienced collectively. According to this theory, a significant portion of our self-esteem, morals and values is directly derived from the social in-group we belong to or associate with (Abrams, 2001). When narratives tap into the collective or generational nostalgia, they trigger a sense of shared history. Studies show that consumer and group behavior in heavily influenced by this; individuals readily align themselves with brands, movements, or communities that help validate their social identity. This boosts ingroup loyalty and social connectedness and acts as an adhesive in uncertain times (Abrams, 2001; Zhang & Li, 2022).
Commercializing Comfort: Nostalgic Marketing
In consumer marketing, companies have, for a long time, adopted emotionally charged narratives to bypass rational consumer behaviour. We often see these in advertisements like those of Paperboat or food delivery brands like Swiggy and Zomato; these platforms advertise campaigns with retro visuals, references from childhood schools and events that were culturally significant. These strategies leverage the affect heuristic, and before we know it, we are buying the vintage t-shirts, buying the drinks that taste of childhood, or ordering food or snacks because the children in the ad were just so similar to us, right?
A similar strategy is equally visible in the modern Indian music industry; a study by Pathak and Gaikwad (2022) indicates that music producers are relying more and more on recycling old Bollywood hit songs through remixes and remakes. While critics argue that this trend highlights the obvious creative draught, from a business perspective, remaking a classic hit from the 1900s and 2000s has more surety to hit the most streams on platforms, essentially protecting any financial risks (The Asian Thinker, 2021).
Constructing Comfort: Nostalgia in Politics
While nostalgia in marketing influences spending habits, its application in political campaigns can shape the nation’s history. During periods of economic stress, societal and cultural anxiety, political leaders highlight these times as chaotic and broken. And once the present is collectively agreed as inferior, campaigns lean on rosy retrospection, pointing back toward a historical “golden age” when the nation was supposedly prosperous.
At the opening of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the crowd and pledged to build a grand and divine India – a Ram Rajya (Livemint, 2024). By connecting current political milestones to an idealised, ancient era of perfect justice, peace, and prosperity, the narrative bypasses the complex scepticism to trust in leaders.
When citizens absorb these cues, their social identity is activated. The political choice is not a mere rational and objective evaluation of the governance, but an emotional assertion of who they are and where they belong. Here, the affective e heuristic takes over and, sometimes, guides their voting decisions toward a leadership that promises to restore the historical pride.
Conclusion
There is more to nostalgia than just an emotional experience and just an assisting tool, and we need to understand it. We are easily guided by information that prods at the part of brain that wants to just give in easily to the cues provided by other parties. However, the magic of nostalgia is still like a double-edged sword; just as much as it is a healthy experience, its overuse might lead to risky decisions and take the rawness out of it to spit it out as a ‘normal’ experience which just got adapted and habituated.
References +
- Abrams, D. (2001). Social identity, psychology of. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 14306-14309. https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/01728- 9
- Broadcast Audience Research Council India. (2021). BARC India launches the third edition of its yearbook “The year after two thousand & nineteen” [Press release]. https://www.barcindia.co.in/announcement/barc-india-launches-the-third-edition-of its-yearbook.pdf
- Livemint. (2024, January 22). Lord Ram is “not a problem but…”: 10 things PM Modi said after Ayodhya Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha ceremony. Mint. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/ayodhya-ram-mandir-pran-pratishtha ceremony-pm-modi-said-lord-ram-not-a-problem-but-10-top-quotes-from-speech 11705917547618.html
- Newman, D. B., Sachs, M. E., Stone, A. A., & Schwarz, N. (2020). Nostalgia and well-being in daily life: An ecological validity perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(2), 325-347. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000236
- Pathak, A., & Gaikwad, N. (2022). An analytical study to examine the effects of song remixes on general listeners and music professionals. Kesari Mahratta Trust Multi Disciplinary Journal, 1(1), 4-12.
- Ranjan, S. (2020). Analysing the response to TV serials retelecast during the COVID-19 lockdown in India. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.02628. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2101.02628
- Romanelli, F. (2022). The nostalgia of pencils, chalk, and typewriters. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 86(3), 8785. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe8785
- Skagerlund, K., Forsblad, M., Slovic, P., & Västfjäll, D. (2020). The affect heuristic and risk perception – Stability across elicitation methods and individual cognitive abilities. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 970. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00970
- The Asian Thinker. (2021). Remaking and remixing of old Bollywood songs. The Asian Thinker: A Quarterly Bilingual Peer-Reviewed Journal for Social Sciences and Humanities, 3(4), 26-31.
- Zhang, Z., & Li, W. (2022). Customer engagement around cultural and creative products: The role of social identity. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 874851. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.874851
