Sometimes you just want to hang out with some old TV friends. They'll be there for you like they've been there before, but they can also make you yearn. Nostalgia isn't only pleasurable. So why do we watch the old favourites for the comfort, for the longing or both? I got insights from psychologists and cognitive scientists.

George E Newman, an associate professor of management and marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. George, great to have you. How are you doing? Great, great. Thanks so much for having me. Of course, I want you to first start off with connecting the dots for us. Nostalgia over here, escapism here. How are they connected? Yeah. So in our work, what we find is that nostalgia provides this kind of escapism, especially when times are feeling uncertain. So if it feels like the world is a bit shaky, people are more likely to cling to nostalgia. Tell us a little bit about the context of the study and what you wanted to look at. Sure. So in our experiment, what we did is we brought people into a laboratory on campus. And then we had they came in and there's a vinyl record player and it's Simon Garfunkel record. And we said, okay, we want you to listen to this record and tell us how much you enjoy it, how good the experience is. But we had two different versions of the study, and in one study before they listened to the record, they read about how well things seem maybe uncertain right now, but if you look at a lot of statistics, it actually it's not so bad. And then in the other condition they read, well, things seem bad now and they really are. They're very uncertain. And what we found is that in the situations in which people had read about how the current times were uncertain or unstable, they actually liked the experience of listening to the record more.

In terms of the things that we look for vinyl records, old TV shows, which nowadays you can just pop on, you know, any streaming service and be like, oh, the good old times. What are we looking for specifically when we are looking into the past? Yeah. So it's really fascinating because a lot of that connection seems to be about like a communal sense of nostalgia, maybe not something that was necessarily part of your own childhood, but things that we associate with the broader culture. And that's really what becomes attractive to us, especially in these times of uncertainty. Well, you mean communal. What are we talking about? Give us an example. So communal, you know, it could be things like typewriters or vinyl records. And interestingly, we find that, you know, older products, let's say, from the past, like answering machines, even though they were part of the past, they don't have that same kind of sense of nostalgia. Is it fair to say that for people who are looking at something that's nostalgic, have they necessarily lived through it themselves, or is this something that they have that they kind of sort of resonate and connect with and be like, oh, I think that is something that happened in the past, or is it a direct connection to something like a typewriter or anything else? It's a great question, and we were really surprised by this. But in our work, we actually found that it's about things that maybe weren't part of your own childhood. So like vinyl records, the number one selling vinyl record is Taylor Swift. Okay. You know, so it's suggesting that it's younger consumers, younger music listeners who probably never experienced a vinyl record, certainly as part of their own childhood. But there's something about that connection and attachment that makes it really attractive.

We hear the word retro a lot and people are like, oh, that's so retro. That's so in things have made their way back. How does nostalgia drive cultural trends? You mentioned consumerism. How does that help what people view, what people buy at the end of the day? Yeah. So what we find in these times of uncertainty and people are kind of looking back to the past. It's it's not just about products. It's kind of images, associations, ways of life that we think about in the past. So, you know, ultimately it's about trying to connect to a different time period, maybe one that we think about as being more stable.

I'm going to get personal with you. Is there something for you that you kind of look back at and go like, okay, in times of, you know, uncertainty that you lean into the nostalgia of totally. Well, you know, when we were doing this research, part of the studies that we were doing is we were having undergraduate students listen to vinyl records in the lab, and I used to have a vinyl record collection as a kid, and it got me interested in it again, and then realised that vinyl records are very expensive. Yeah, yeah. But but you know, so I've done a little bit of collecting. I also really like old photographs. There's something about having the, the tangible photo. So not black and white. We're talking coloured but still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's something that's really nice about having that, that physical photo that for me personally kind of serves the same function. There is this idea or perception that the past was simpler, more authentic. Is this a factor in sort of our reach for for the past? In some ways? Is it true? I think is what most people kind of we have this perception that those times are were simpler, but are they actually true? It's really interesting. So the research there suggests that there's a bit of rose coloured glasses. When we think about the past that we tend to filter out all of the negatives, all the difficulty, you know, life expectancies were shorter, it was harder to get medical care, all of those kinds of things that we don't maybe normally think of. We think about the past as this simpler, happy time. And so we might kind of gloss over some of those negative details.

Is it fair to say, though, simpler times were also probably in some cases younger didn't have a lot of responsibility. So we can look back at those days and kind of go like, well, of course they were simpler. You know, we didn't have to pay bills or a mortgage or, you know, run errands. Yeah. You know, and there's kind of like the blurring between a communal sense of nostalgia and our own personal nostalgia. And I think you're exactly right that when we're thinking about the past, we can kind of mix those two things up and say, it was a lot simpler for me. I just had to run around and play outside, and it must have been a nice time.

What I find fascinating is people say they want to witness authenticity as well, but then we have this sort of urge to watch shows like reality TV. And I am curious, you know, why do we binge reality TV shows that seem to sort of defy that desire of authenticity? I think that's really fascinating, too. I mean, there's authenticity in a different sense, right? That that it's kind of a window into people's private lives. Maybe the things that they would be a little bit ashamed of showing it. So that's part of the excitement, I think, of reality TV is seeing that behind the scenes look. So it's a different sense of authenticity. It's maybe not authenticity with respect to our culture, but authenticity more having to do with, you know, certain kinds of people or a certain kind of lifestyle.

So you have a book out called How Great Ideas Happen, and that looks at sort of the past and how it can drive innovative ideas. Tell me, how can taking a look back through the history books do that? So how great ideas happen is definitely a big part of it is looking towards the past and being able to draw on past ideas to fuel new ones. So you know a hometown success story, the Instant Pot, you know, looking back to crock pots, which had been around for a very long time, but, you know, taking it and reconfiguring it and making something new or Hamilton, you know, which just kind of smashed Broadway records. But that was really about focusing on a piece of history that maybe had been overlooked, or at least not talked about quite as much, and bringing that to the fore and putting a very unique individual spin on it.

Is there a great idea that is waiting to be discovered that you think is just on the cusp of us kind of looking in the past? I mean, throughout the book, I really try to bring up this idea that that creativity and innovation is something that's available to all of us and that there are great ideas underneath our feet. It's really just about paying attention, being responsive, looking to your environment and in this case, also looking to the past.

What would you recommend? What is your go to in times of uncertainty? And you want to sort of to back into a time of nostalgia. What do you do? Well, for me. As a as a child of the 1980s, it's all about those 1980s movies like the John Hughes movies is a real sense of nostalgia for me personally. Yeah. All right, George, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much. >> Thank you.