Fountain Of Youth

Is Nostalgia a Fountain of Youth?
Matija Draskovic In the reference to an article on pscychologytoday.com “Is nostalgia a fountain of youth?”
There is nothing sweeter than hearing an old yet familiar song on the radio one day, which sets you back in the past, and spurs many long lost memories which leads to forgotten emotions. This is what Nostalgia is. A more academic definition of nostalgia would refer to: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. Dr. Clay Routledge psychology professor of North Dakota State University made the connection with nostalgia and youth/health. The idea was that if nostalgia involves mentally travelling back in time then maybe nostalgia would make people feel and act more youthful. This can then result in exercising becoming more fun and efficient. Therefore Dr. Clay Routledge set out studies in order to see if his hypothesis was right.
Dr. Clay Routlegde conducted three studies all of them call the “fountain of youth”, in all of these studies he split the people into two groups, either controlled or not. Essentially, the studies tested and found evidence for the assertion that people feel younger after engaging in nostalgia. The first lab study (sub named: The soundtrack of our lives) used music in reference to nostalgia and weather they are made to feel younger or older. Since all of us have certain song that we associate our youth to, Dr. Routlegde had his participants

The cause being that listening to nostalgic music and the effect being that it makes you feel younger. Even though the nationalities of the participants were not given in the study the vast ranging of the participants age supports that this study can be generalized to a wider population. Neither harm nor stress was caused to the participants, and replication of the study is easy due to the fact that it’s a lab