The objective of study 2 was to test whether nostalgia promotes healthful behaviors by manipulating nostalgia and measuring subsequent motivation to curb personally relevant health-threatening behaviors. In this study, participants were asked to select their most health-threatening behavior they engaged in at least twice a month from a set twelve behaviors then either write about a personally nostalgic event or an ordinary past life event. Following the writing task, participants were asked their intentions to curb the threatening behavior they reported at the beginning of the study. If nostalgia increases the receptiveness to self-threatening health, then those in a nostalgic, relative to neutral, state should be report greater behavioral intentions to curb their health-threatening behavior.
Method
Participants and design.
Seventy-three students at the University of Minnesota completed the study in exchange for course credit (45 males, Mage = 20.00, SD = 2.01). Participants were
randomly assigned to one of two conditions (autobiographical event: nostalgia vs.
ordinary life event) predicting the motivation to curb unhealthy behaviors using a single factor, two-level between subjects design.
Participants were told the study session consisted of two unrelated studies: the first investigating health behaviors and the second examining life events. Participants came into the laboratory and were presented with a set of twelve health-threatening behaviors (e.g., biking without a helmet, eating greasy food, drinking too much alcohol) and instructed to indicate which was the most health-threatening behavior they engaged in at least twice a month. Participants also had the option to report a behavior that was not included in the list, but none choose this option. Next, participants indicated how often they engaged in this behavior (several times a day, several times a week, once a week, once a month).
Participants then completed the nostalgia manipulation. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the nostalgia condition and half were randomly assigned to the control condition. In the nostalgia condition participants were given the definition of nostalgia and asked to write about a personally nostalgic event. In the control condition participants were asked to write about an ordinary life event. All participants wrote for three minutes and thirty seconds. As a manipulation check, participants next indicated how nostalgic they felt using the same three items from the study 1 (e.g., Wildschut et al.
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Motivation to curb unhealthful behaviors.
Participants were presented with the health-threatening behavior they chose at the start of the study and asked how motivated they were to change this behavior by
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D = .97). Participants then completed a demographics form and were debriefed.
Results
Manipulation check.
The three nostalgia items were averaged into a single index of nostalgic feelings.
As intended, participants who wrote about a nostalgic event reported feeling more nostalgia than those who wrote about an ordinary life event (Mnostalgia = 5.42, SD = 1.40 vs. Mcontrol = 4.15, SD = 1.28; t(71) = 2.00, p < .05).
Motivation to curb unhealthful behaviors.
The five motivation items were averaged into a single index of health motivation.
An independent samples t-test with nostalgia condition predicting motivation revealed that nostalgia participants indicated they were more motivated to curb their threatening behavior compared to control participants (Mnostalgia = 4.73, SD = 1.72 vs. Mcontrol = 3.91, SD = 1.74; t(71) = 4.06, p < .01).
Note that most of the participants (N = 29) chose drinking too much as their threatening behavior. For the participants reporting drinking too much as their damaging behavior, nostalgia marginally predicted motivation to curb behavior. Nostalgia
participants were more motivated to curb their behavior than control participants (Mnostalgia = 4.72, SD = 1.89 vs. Mcontrol = 3.09, SD = 1.47; t (27) = 1.89, p = .07).
I also examined if severity of the damaging behavior interacted with nostalgia.
Two coders, blind to condition, were given the list of the twelve damaging behaviors and judged their severity (D = 1.00). I used these coding to separate the behaviors into high or low severity categories. A between subjects ANOVA with nostalgia condition and
severity of behavior predicting motivation to curb behavior revealed a nonsignificant interaction between nostalgia and severity of behavior (F(1, 69) < .40, NS). Results also revealed a significant effect of severity on motivation to curb damaging behavior, with those who reported a behavior lesser, relative to higher, in severity indicating greater intentions to curb it (Mlow = 5.04, SD = 1.62 vs. Mhigh = 3.94, SD = 1.74; F (1, 69) = 6.13, p < .02). The effect of nostalgia was nonsignificant but in the predicted direction
(Mnostalgia = 4.73, SD = 1.72 vs. Mcontrol = 3.92, SD = 1.74; F(1, 69) = 2.35, p = .13).
Discussion
Study 2 built upon study 1 by providing evidence for the causality of the relationship between nostalgia and the receptiveness of self-threatening health
information. The primary purpose of study 2 was to demonstrate that nostalgia increases the motivation towards healthful goals by manipulating nostalgia and measuring
intentions to curb health-threatening behaviors. Study 2 found that participants who recalled a nostalgic, relative to ordinary life, event reported greater intentions to curb their most health-threatening behavior. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that nostalgia increases receptiveness to health information.
The next step in this work was to test and establish process evidence for the nostalgia-health effect. Given the results from the money and nostalgia chapter, I predicted that meaning in life drives the nostalgia-health effect. Study 3 tests this underlying process using new messages, measures, and manipulations. Specifically, in study 3 participants measured the effectiveness of messages reporting a link between energy drink consumption and heart disease. Study 3 also aimed to provide process evidence for meaning in life and tested social support, positive affect, positive self-regard, and self-affirmation as alternative mediators. In addition, the alternative positive affect explanation was also tested using a positive affect-eliciting control condition (Hepper et al. 2012).