S4E7: Back to the Future: How Nostalgia Fuels a Meaningful Life with Dr. Clay Routledge

Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Jason Dressel, Dr. Clay Routledge

Jason Dressel  00:11

Today on the history factory podcast nostalgia with Dr Clay Rutledge. I’m Jason Dressel, and welcome to the history factory Podcast, the podcast at the intersection of business and history, we have a terrific show today about an emotion that is broadly misunderstood, and that emotion is nostalgia. With me today is Dr. Clay Rutledge, the Vice President of Research and the director of the human flourishing lab at the arch bridge Institute, and the author of past forward how nostalgic can help you live a more meaningful life, which was published last year prior to joining the arch bridge Institute, Clay spent nearly two decades in academia as a professor of psychology, Professor of Management and distinguished professor of business as a leading expert in existential psychology and human motivation. Clay’s work focuses on helping people reach their full potential and build meaningful lives. Clay is a highly cited researcher who has published more than 100 scholarly papers, co edited three academic books, authored three books and received numerous awards for his research and mentorship. Clay has also authored dozens of articles for popular outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Fortune Business Insider and Harvard Business Review. CLAY regularly advises a range of organizations, from small startups to large companies, helping them use existential psychology and behavioral science more broadly, to improve their products and services and their workplace culture. He also writes the weekly newsletter flourishing Friday. So here we are, me and Claire Rutledge talking about the power of nostalgia. You clay. Welcome to the history factory podcast.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 02:07

Thanks so much, Jason. It’s great to be here.

 

Jason Dressel  02:11

Well, first, congratulations on the book. It’s a really, cool book. And you know, we’ll get into it. You take sort of a different approach than some of the other folks in the field who are talking about this, this space of nostalgia. But first, you know, I have, a theory, and I look forward to kind of hearing your thoughts on this, which is, it feels like we’re in the midst of some kind of nostalgia trend. There’s this body of new research and publications coming out, like your book, that have come out. There’s been a quite a few things that have come out in the last year or so. And it just seems like everywhere you look right now, you know products, whether they be cars or TV shows or films, branding and advertising, there’s just a lot of content out there that people are sharing and trading in that are very prevalent with nostalgia. Do you feel that way? Or is it just something that, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, once you start to look for it, you just kind of think you’re seeing it everywhere.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 03:17

Yeah, it’s funny, because, you know, I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years now. And I think it was back in I want to say it’s like 2012 or something. So over a decade ago, this reporter, I believe, from CNN, reached out to me and said, this is like, we’ve never been more nostalgic. And I actually think that CNN published an article something like the year of nostalgia, or peak nostalgia, or something like that. So as long as I’ve been studying this, I’ve been fielding calls in which there’s some sense from somebody that you know this is peak nostalgia. We’ve never been more this is like a new trend. So at some level, I think nostalgia is a forever trend, and I think that’s in part because I’m sure we’ll get into this. We’re always moving forward, and the way the architecture of our mind works is such that as we move forward, the future is uncertain and unknown, and so we’re always pulling from the past as a way to to move forward. That being said, I don’t think you’re imagining this. I think in some ways you could say nostalgia, even if it’s a forever trend, is somewhat on steroids now, and I have some thoughts as to why that we can get into. But no, I think you’re right. Like it just seems like it’s really it’s really amped up, especially around the time of the pandemic, and post pandemic, like it’s really, like, even so, another way of saying is, even if it’s been trending up for a while, maybe even decades, it seems like it’s really, really amped up recently.

 

Jason Dressel  04:54

So let’s, get into that. Then clay, why do you know what is happening right now that you. Think is kind of uniquely different than maybe 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. You know, what is making this sort of affinity for the past so popular? 

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 05:10

I think in a good way to think about this, or to have this discussion, is to just briefly talk about, like, the why people are nostalgic to begin with, and so in general, in the research that we’ve done and others have done, we can kind of break nostalgia down into having two classes of triggers, you know, things that instigate the nostalgic feeling. One is what we call sensory inputs. So these are, like the familiar sights and smells. You hear an old song on the radio, you smell, you know, somebody cooking something, and it immediately triggers or evokes that memory that makes you nostalgic. So if you think about the sensory inputs, and you think about the way modern technology works, and you know, in the digital world, there’s so many more opportunities now to input like those types of triggers. So for instance, like a social media, like Facebook, they, you know, I don’t know if they do this anymore, but they used to do this, like Throwback Thursday thing, but all sorts of platforms use nostalgia in this way. With streaming services, it’s never been easier to like market, you know, nostalgia content to people like in the past. If I wanted to re watch an old movie, I might have to, you know, go try to find the DVD somewhere. Now it’s available. Not only is available on a, you know, on a streaming platform, but you know, these companies know that I you know that I might want to see that. And so they they remind me that it’s available. They know quite well what my preferences are. And so I think from the sensory input, you can think about like, there’s just a lot more opportunities to make nostalgia accessible to people. The other classes triggers is are more psychological. They’re more internal to us. It’s not the external world saying, Hey, here’s something nostalgic. It’s our own brain saying we need to use nostalgia because something’s not right, like we’re uncertain, we’re anxious, we’re distressed, in some ways, we’re looking for comfort, and so we look to the past for comfort, but we’re also looking for inspiration and guidance. So in all these cases, um, you can think and all these kind of, like psychological cases, you can make the argument, and some people have that the world feels crazy. And there’s also, there’s, you know, there’s political polarization, there’s increased mental health problems among younger generations in particular. Um, there’s a growing distrust of institutions. There’s, you know, all these things that are happening that might be elevating our need for to turn to nostalgia. The pandemic’s a good example, and there’s lots of good evidence that consumer trends were really nostalgic driven during the pandemic. So like Spotify, people were listening to more music in general during the pandemic, but they were especially listening to nostalgic music. So I think, you know, if you think society, if you, if you follow trends of society disruption, you would expect higher disruption in society to lead to more nostalgia. And then finally, related to that, even if things were going well, even if you said, Okay, things are going great. You know, the world, the world is doing better, which, you know, I’m kind of one of the, one of the Progress advocates, who thinks things are better than a lot of people think. But that being said, we also live in an environment where there’s a ton of negative media. There’s a ton of outrage based media. So even if things aren’t as bad as some people think, we’re in a climate in which we’re encouraged to think the world is falling apart, and when we feel the world is falling apart, we look to nostalgia. So all those things might suggest that, yes, you’re right, that nostalgia is really going up, and there’s, there’s these different reasons for it.

 

Jason Dressel  08:36

And you mentioned trends, and I’m curious what’s your take in terms of how companies and brands are using nostalgia right now? How conscious are they of how they’re using nostalgia, and have you seen sort of a different way in which they are deploying it?

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 08:52

You made it. You made a good observation earlier, when you said there’s a lot of more science and writing around nostalgia happening so, and I think brands are becoming more and more aware of that. Companies and organizations are really starting to tune into the modern science of nostalgia. So people in advertising and marketing have been studying nostalgia, you know, for decades, all the way back to, you know, the 1980s really with a basic understanding that people tend to have sentimental feelings towards products and media content from their youth. It’s referred to as the reminiscence bump. There’s just something about that period in our life we like stuff from it, whether music, movies, cars and we tend to like stuff. And advertisers figured that out a long time ago, but in the last couple decades, we’ve really started to do a lot more, like controlled experimental research, behavioral science, research, using diverse methodologies. And I think brands and companies are, you know, they’re reading that work. They’re understanding that, oh, there’s, there’s a lot of new science coming out about nostalgia. We can leverage that to do more, you know, to use. More in a more sophisticated fashion,

 

Jason Dressel  10:03

yeah, and, what’s that look like, just in terms of kind of the execution of it, you know, how, how has sort of that research and more sophisticated thinking of how they can use nostalgia, you know, any thoughts on how that sort of is manifesting itself, in terms of how it gets executed. 

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 10:21

Yeah so I’ve done a lot of advising work myself in this space I’ve done so, you know, I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been on the, like, basic science side. I ran, you know, for many years, I was a professor. I’m not anymore, but I ran a research laboratory, you know, really focused on doing these, like, controlled, randomized types of studies and trying to understand the intricacies of nostalgia. And then I’ve also been on the kind of consulting and advising side. So it’s a, here’s the science, here’s a particular challenge or goal your organization has, and you think nostalgia might be useful for it. How can we apply How can we apply that? So for, for instance, you can think of, there’s, you know, there’s now hundreds of studies focused on very specific functions of nostalgia, like a social function. So one thing that’s interesting about nostalgia is most of our nostalgic memories tend to be very social. They involve other people, even memories that are like a personal triumphs, like maybe you had some major athletic accomplishment in your youth, when people reflect on that memory, they often focus on the people that made that helped make that possible for them. They certainly do that when, you know, they give any kind of like interview or someone where they’re talking about it, you know, here’s the people that supported me. And so one of the things that you know organizations have you know can do with that information is to say, Oh, wow. Like, even when we’re focused on something like, like, something that seems very individual, like creativity or innovation, we’re trying to, we’re trying to be at the cutting edge, and we want to use nostalgia in some ways. We might actually be more social than we realize. And so I think just understanding those sort of nuances, and the research can be helpful. And you know, if nothing else is helpful like, kind of breaking down myths, nostalgic myths, for instance, you know, a common myth that I’ve heard is like, well, nostalgia only really works for older customers or older clients or older audiences. Like this is an old person sentiment. And the evidence is that’s just not true at all. In fact, young people are extremely nostalgic. If anything, nostalgia dips in middle age, but it’s still pretty strong. But young people are very, very nostalgic, in large part because they’re in periods of transition. They’re going away to college, they’re figuring out what they want to do with their life. They’re, you know, and that period of uncertainty makes them sort of long for these experiences from their childhood and youth. Similarly, as we get older, you know,as we approach like retirement, we start to lose family members and friends, we’re dealing with the declining health. We see another like increase like, another jolt of nostalgia, which, again, is helping us deal with those specific challenges. So I think, I think companies can,learn this kind of stuff and realize, oh, we are like, our intuitions about nostalgia might be totally wrong. And understanding the you know, understanding, for instance, that young people are very nostalgic, can help them, like, capitalize on that where they might be neglecting and, you know, the entire generation like Gen Z, because they get, oh, nostalgia is not going to work on them. And it turns out, we can talk about this later, that nostalgia actually is very, very powerful among Gen Z, and it’s in a lot of interesting and surprising ways,

 

Jason Dressel  13:38

Yeah and I think it may be my own, my own bias and perspective, right? But when one hears the word nostalgia, I think that for many of us, certainly, it might have been how I would have responded to the concept of nostalgia of several years ago, before learning more about the science behind this. And the nuance of it was, you know, when I thought of nostalgia, I thought about, you know, to your point, you know, kind of Throwback Thursday on social media and images of, you know, 1990s Jordan reels, or, you know, ice cream shops from the 1950s or whatever. And you know, the kind of Trinket and trash stuff that you know you might buy in a gift shop, and it really kind of feels like it’s selling the impact and power of nostalgia. Short,

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 14:34

Yeah, I think so. And one reason that’s very, very under appreciated. And it’s because it’s not obvious. You don’t see it in you know, so clearly in the end result, as those are all examples of very explicit nostalgia. But so much of nostalgia is work happens behind the scenes or under the hood, so to speak. So. For instance, go talk to a chef who’s opening, like, a fusion restaurant. Or trying to do with something really, really new and unique, and like, push cuisine forward in some in some way. And it might seem like, well, that doesn’t have anything to do with nostalgia, like they’re like, trying to create something new. We’ll talk to them. Where are they getting their inspiration? Where are they getting their recipes? You’ll find nostalgic stores. You’ll find they’ll say, Well, I’m pulling this from my background with this particular culture, you know, which my mom’s from and my dad’s from this culture. And I’m fusing these two things together. Or I grew up at the you know, my dad was in the military, and we grew up on these different bases, and I got to try all these different foods and, you know, exposed to these different cultures. So even in something that seems like somebody is not, it seems like there’s a creation and innovation that is very fresh and cutting edge, often the inspiration behind it, like the energy that behind it, like the creative work behind it, under the hood, is very much driven by someone’s nostalgic memories. You know, I learned this from, you know, talking to a lot of artists and a lot of entrepreneurs, filmmakers, musicians, you know, finding musician that you think is really doing something cutting edge again, like the person starting a restaurant, they’ll tell you, Oh, this is what I heard. This was the music that was played in my house growing up. And this makes me like this, you know, makes me, you know, feel connected to my parents. And I sprinkled this in, like the sample of this into this work. It influenced this work, but I put a modern twist on it. So much of nostalgia is that it’s very, very non obvious. It’s very much not in your face. It’s very subtle and even unconscious, like you don’t, you know, until it’s pointed out. You’re like, oh, I wouldn’t have picked up on that. So I think that’s a big part of it. And the second thing I’d say about that is, you know, doing this work in the science of nostalgia, even things that seem kind of superficial, like I keep this, you know, arcade and in my office, and it just seems like, oh, that’s like, some goofy retro thing from the 80s that, like, makes, you know, makes clay happy. But even these kind of more consumer product, like contacts with nostalgia often really are just symbols or, you know, ways to make contact with deeper memories. I like seeing that in the background because it reminds me of playing video games with my friends and my brother. These are people I don’t see that much anymore, and so it’s not the actual arcade that it’s not the arcade that matters. It’s what the arcade connects me to. And I think so much of these like more seemingly superficial encounters with nostalgia products really what you know, the reason we like them is because they trigger some memory of something deeper,

 

Jason Dressel  17:53

The way you’re describing it. I never really thought of it through this lens before Clay, but it nostalgia is almost the sort of psychological and emotional layer on top of history.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 18:06

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, in some ways, I think of nostalgia as being like the, you know, what I call history in action, like it’s the motivational or regulatory component of history. Because, like you said, it’s, it’s the psychological piece, it’s the piece that’s in our head. And we tend to think of history, or a lot of people, you don’t, because you’re, you know, you’re an expert in this space, doing this kind of work and the storytelling work. But a lot of people, I think, think of history as a very passive experience, something that just happens to us. Because you look back at this happened on this date, but, you know, the things that happened. You know, people made them happen, right? So, you know, history is full of human agency. Is full of, like, characters doing things, building things, creating things, having conflicts, having relationships, and so, yeah, I think this, the psychological piece in that is what makes the story move forward.

 

Jason Dressel  19:01

Great point. And you mentioned before the sort of the distinctions of of the life cycle, and you know when nostalgia may be more or less kind of prevalent. You know, in terms of younger people, middle aged people and older people. What about in terms of different generations? Do you see that different generations are reacting to nostalgia differently, or are they largely responding consistently throughout time? Of how people of that age kind of respond to nostalgia. They’re just kind of older or younger in that life cycle, if that makes sense.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 19:44

Yeah, yeah. I was fortunate to be part of this team, an international team of researchers, that did this massive study of nostalgia, looking at it around the globe. So we were able to kind of, you know, collect nostalgic memories and measures. You know, nostalgic sentiments, and you know what it does for people. What causes nostalgia for people from, you know, totally different cultures, from different age groups, different backgrounds, different experiences. And what we found is that nostalgia is a very universal like it seems like it’s a very organic human experience that that transcends age and transcends culture. So the actual psychological mechanisms, you know, the the architecture of how nostalgia works in someone’s mind, doesn’t seem to be, you know, different for a young person from an old person, from an American to, you know, person in China, for instance, that being said, that’s the psychology piece. There’s also this broader sociological, cultural, historical piece. Of course, people come from different generations, and our personal nostalgia is very much connected to what we call a collective nostalgia. It’s like the things the pop cultural phenomenon that we experienced in our generation. So at the generational level we can think of, you know, there would be differences in nostalgia. So I’m Gen X, you know, I’m very much a child of the 80s and 90s. The music, the movies, the things I’m nostalgic is going to be different than for a baby boomer, and different for Gen Z, even though the way it works in my brain and the kind of regulatory and motivational properties are very similar. The content of that, nostalgia is often different. And that’s really important for, you know, for brands companies to understand who is, if they’re targeting different age groups, or if they’re trying to do doing something that transcends age they need to think about that. That being said, one thing that I think that’s really, really been fascinating me lately is the extent to which Gen Z is driving a lot of nostalgia trends for older content and older really, for things that are more analog and so like if you look at vinyl records, if you look at CDs, if you look at physical books, if you look at live music, you know, attending live music, a lot of things that are about the physical world they’re interacting with physical products are increasingly driven by Gen Z, who are digital natives, right? So this is a nostalgia, what we call historical nostalgia, which is a nostalgia for a time before your own autobiographical memories. And so, you know what I think it really represents is, if you think about like some kind of distress causing nostalgia, another way to frame that is unmet needs make us nostalgic. So what are young people feeling that they’re missing, right? And, you know, as they grew up in this digital world, I think they’re absolutely fascinated by the analog, I think

 

Jason Dressel

The tactile, 

 

Dr. Clay Routledge

yeah, they feel like that’s missing from their lives. There’s something that’s cool, you know, a lot of things that, like, you think of as like, cool, or things that are different, right? Like things that are like, not the main it’s things that feel alternative and to, you know, to me, like CDs. Don’t like I have a bunch of CDs. I remember years ago, when I was a professor, talking about how I bought a CD, and everyone in the class laughed. And I wasn’t trying to be make a joke. I was, I was being sincere, like they were streaming music, and I was still buying CDs. So it’s that was, you know, a decade or so ago, so, but it’s interesting now, like, there is this, there’s this drive for like, you said, like the tactile and so I think that tells us something, you know, interesting about, like, about history, like, about how so many like, forms of Historical nostalgia, like, whether it’s for fashion, architecture, auto design, you know, the creative arts, you know physical products, often seems like it’s exclusively connected to with people, to people who experience that. But in actuality, you can think about it as well. Somebody feels, people feel like that, something’s missing from their lives, they become more nostalgic for that, even if it’s from a previous time. As another example, and I’ve worked with some media companies, is like the popularity of, you know, certain shows, like Friends among young people who weren’t around when it originally aired. And you know, what’s that about? Well, some of it seems to be like, you know, at least, I think some of it seems to be like, oh, like, there people before smartphones, you know what? Again, it’s a caricature of social life. But like, people used to just hang out organically and do things. And I think that’s fascinating. I think young people think that’s think that’s fascinating, not that they don’t ever hang out, but so much of their lives are mediated by technology now, and so we do that, those of us who are into like spending time outdoors, we often glamorize like, this ideal, you know, past or something, and it’s like, oh, we’re like people used to be in nature more. And it’s not that we want to live like people used to live, but what we’re saying is like, Oh, we spend. Too much time indoors, and there’s something appealing to like that, that kind of heritage, something about that. And so we’re and so we find it again. It’s because we feel like there’s something missing from our lives.

 

Jason Dressel  25:13

Yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned that notion of historical nostalgia. One of the things that I learned from our friend, Dr Christine Bacho. When I spent time with her and she was on this podcast a few years ago, if I’m recalling the descriptions correctly, she said essentially that there’s three different kinds of nostalgia. There’s historical nostalgia, which is what you described, when people have this gravitate to this time before, like Gen Z, looking back and having this appreciation for a time before that they were not part of. There’s what I think she called Personal nostalgia, which is that nostalgia of what you have with your arcade and thinking back to your time with your brother and your friends. And then the one that was really interesting is future nostalgia, where you are feeling nostalgic for something that you haven’t lost yet, but you know you are going to and the perfect kind of example of that that she shared was kind of when, I’ve got, you know, two teenagers at home. So I’m starting to get nostalgic for having kids at home, because I’m starting to realize that I’m far closer to them being away, and my wife and I being, you know, an empty nester, so they haven’t left yet, but in a weird way, I’m already nostalgic for the times when they were home.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge

Yeah, yeah

 

Jason Dressel

So I don’t know if you, I don’t know if you have anything to add to that, but you know, and I’m gonna, are there specific kind of stages in your life when one of those three kind of modes of nostalgia may be more or less prominent?

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 26:59

Yeah? So, you know, that’s a good point about the, you know, future nostalgia, you know, we often call anticipatory nostalgia, which can be really, was, yeah, exactly. And it can be really enhanced by so there’s some cool research showing that, you know, if you’re trying to, like, build this like, if you’re like, I want to feel nostalgia. I want to build a nostalgic memory. We often do this naturally when we plan vacations or plan events. But like I want to, you know, I want to this to be something that nostalgic for one of the biggest things you can do is savor it. Like savoring when we savor experiences, we tend to be more nostalgic for them. And that’s a good, you know, that’s kind of a good lesson. We were talking about some, you know, some of the trends of modernity and, you know, and to be clear, like, it seems like I’m picking on smartphones, like, I love my smartphone, you know, I’m not against smartphones, you know, it’s an awesome tool. But, you know, we find ourselves in situations where it’s like, where, you know, like, I go to concerts, and it’s like, everyone’s, you know, has the phone out, and they’re recording stuff, and they’re so worried about putting this stuff on social media. And I’m like, why don’t you savor the concert? You know, not to be like the nerdy psychologist, not to be the buzzkill, but like, you’re gonna get more out of that memory if you, savor it, if you could, you know, if you could figure out a way to savor it while recording it. Maybe that’s great too, because you’ll have both, like they’re, you know, you’ll have the recording and the and the memory, but that, but, yeah,

 

Jason Dressel  28:27

By the way, 300 other people are doing the same thing. So it’s gonna be on Facebook and YouTube anyway. So you’re good,

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 28:33

yeah, absolutely. And you are right

 

Jason Dressel  28:37

We don’t all need to become real time documentarians, do we? Right?

 

Dr. Clay Rutledge 28:41

No, and the professionals are going to do a better, much better job of it. But, yeah, no, so, so, yeah. I think at different times in our lives, again, like I said before, like I think the underlying psychology of nostalgia is is pretty universal, but at different times of our lives, we might use different forms of nostalgia, more or less based on what we’re going through. So there’s another type of nostalgia that we haven’t talked about, which is called collective nostalgia. So personal nostalgia is like our personal, autobiographical memories, historical nostalgia, like you noted as about a time before such memories, collective nostalgia is really nostalgic memories that people share in group settings. And so like, this is a big driver of a lot of fundraising efforts for colleges is to contact alumni and like, make them like when you were the student here and you had the shared experience with other students. And the reason I bring up the collective nostalgia is because it’s really good for bonding groups to work on, on shared goals, goals. So this is great for organizations. This is great for companies to think about like we have a brand, we have an organizational identity, we have a story. We. Have a history that binds us as a group. Different people enter and leave that group at different times, just like different people enter and leave, you know, a university, but that’s our collective group, and we have collective memories that we want to share with each other to form that identity and having that strong sense of collective identity, which is really elevated by collective feelings of collective nostalgia increases like loyalty to your group. It reduces turnover intentions. It makes people more inspired, makes people more cooperative. It makes them want to work together. Like it really fuses and binds a group together. And so that’s another element too. And so we have that in our social lives, in our organizational lives, like we have this, you know, this sense of collecting the sales, which is really helpful when dealing with kind of existentially threatening situations, when I’m reminded of how small and insignificant I am, how finite my life is, it’s useful to be Like, yeah, but I’m part of something bigger than myself, and I’m contributing to the collective story of that organization that’s going to continue. You know, my work will continue on. We think of this with family legacy, right? We say, Well, I’m contributing to my family. They’re going to continue. You know, it existed before me, I hope it exists after me, and but we can also feel that way in other types of institutions and in the organizations we participate in.

 

Jason Dressel  31:29

That’s really interesting too, because then you think about how different kinds of organizations can use nostalgia. So when you talk about that notion of family and multi generational. One can imagine how that has applicability to, you know, investment management as an example, right, right? And you talked about sort of that, that use of groups, you know, what do you see just in terms of like organizations? What do you see in terms of organizations doing nostalgia, well, you know, how are they using it effectively? And maybe what, from your perspective, is, is not using nostalgia effectively as you can

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 32:09

Yeah, I think so. I think there are organizations that a lot of their brand is so nostalgia plays a central role in the organization. A good example is the company, Nintendo, right? They’re a video game company that’s not known for having the state of the art graphics or technology that, like the Sony Playstation has, or even the Xbox, but they have a strong, loyal they’ve been around for a long time. They have a loyal customer base. And the reason they’re successful, how they do nostalgia, well, is that, you know, they know that you build these attachment to these IPs, like to the you know, you have these characters that people love, Mario, Zelda, and they’ve been around for a long time. And, you know, people pass this down generationally, like parents play these games with their kids and so forth. But you keep them fresh, you you know, you introduce new you know, they don’t just feel like retro. They don’t just feel like, Oh, this is I’m just playing the old game again, right? So they always come up with some new interface. Like the Nintendo Switch is a good example of, like, Oh, it’s this fun thing that reminds you kind of like a handheld, like in the old days, like a Game Boy, but you can dock it to your TV. You can play with, you know, you can play in groups. And they really emphasize the social element of the gaming, which is a big part of nostalgia, is like, I played these games with with my friends and my siblings and my and my family members, and so it’s like, you know, that’s what I want to do. And they keep things fresh and fun, like, it’s always like, but this is fun, like, you feel youthful. I think companies that understand that people don’t want to, like, get stuck. So there’s a view of nostalgia is like being stuck in the past, right? It’s like, that’s not, people are nostalgic because they want to feel young. They want to feel alive and energized. They, you know, it’s like, it makes them open minded. It makes them like, confident. It makes them like, you know, like, joyful. It brings, it makes, makes us want to have fun. So it’s like, if you can do that, if you can like, connect something that’s from your past, but in a really fresh way. It makes it feel forward looking. And, you know, I titled, that’s why I titled my book, pass forward, because really the way to use nostalgia, whether you’re an individual or a company, is to think, is to start, I think, with the premise that this has to be about going forward. This can’t be about going to the past. This has to be about like, we’re moving forward an organization. We don’t have time machines. You can’t take your company backwards. Your company is going to succeed in the future, or it’s not. So you have to make it future oriented. And I think organizations that understand that and bring in nostalgia elements do it well. Another way of thinking of. About this is organizations that understand nostalgia can be one leg of a multidimensional approach. Is good. Nostalgia can’t hold everything right, but if you integrate it with other things, like you know, maybe your audience, or your customer base is very focused on environmental or sustainability concerns, well, there’s a way to leverage nostalgia for that, right? So you can sprinkle nostalgia into things, but it can’t be the whole thing, right? It has to be one dimension of a broader strategy. I think organizations that do that well understand that, and again, going to like the looking forward thing, like, sometimes organizations will like too little, too late, whole and then the styles of strings, it’s like, you know, like a company that, you know, I bring to mind, like Blockbuster or Toys-R-Us, or maybe even Kodak, like companies that, like, were late to the game, understanding the modern marketplace, or that, you know, how much of things had moved to online, digital streaming, or like purchasing products online, or like having high, you know, like high quality digital products. It’s like they kind of try to rely on, well, oh, we’ve got this legacy. We’ve got this brand. People have these sentimental attachments. That’s great, and if you did the other things good, that would be a bonus. Like that might push you over the top, but you can’t neglect you can’t pull nostalgia out at the end and hope it’ll save you, because then it just feels old, right? Then it just feels like you’re not doing well, and you’re just trying to like put you know? You’re trying to remind people, oh, this, didn’t you like this in the past? And again, people don’t want to feel old. They want to feel like they’re staying up with the times, but that infusion of nostalgia can feel fresh,

 

Jason Dressel  36:43

Yeah. And that reminds me, you know, one of the things that I learned from History Factory’s founder Bruce Weinrich, he used to have a saying which was heritage as part of a winner’s vocabulary, and very much in keeping with the concept that you’re talking about. You know, the analogy I would always use is sports, right? So I’m a diehard North Carolina basketball fan. Carolina has this incredibly rich heritage and tradition, and you’ve got, you know, a legacy of, you know, Michael Jordan and Dean Smith. But that heritage comes all of a sudden a liability if you’re not winning today, it’s just reminding everyone that you’re not as good as you once were. And so to your point, to some of those companies that lost their way, it’s really hard to talk about the past when you don’t have an inspiring sort of, you know, vision and ability to instill confidence in the future.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 37:42

Yeah, absolutely. And one other thing I think that, you know, sometimes companies do, and I’m I’m going to pick on a particular company, even I feel okay doing it because I’m a big fan, like everything I’ve got going on. I’m on a MacBook. I’m on an iMac computer. I use a MacBook, I use an iPhone. I’ve got an Apple Watch, like I’ve showed sufficient, like customer loyalty to Apple, but that, you know, and this is something, this is not a novel insight, of course, but like that Apple iPad, like commercial that crush, commercial that everyone hated, is a good example of of some companies actually do something that’s anti nostalgia. So it’s not only that, it’s not, it’s not an example of, like, they didn’t use nostalgia properly. It’s they didn’t understand, like, how, how much of an assault on people’s nostalgia sentiments it was to, you know, because it because people are afraid of technological change, and instead of leaning into the So, for people who don’t know about this, what I’m talking about, there’s this commercial where I think it’s the iPad, like crushing like piano, a piano, an arcade machine, like, all these old technologies and creations and like, people got mad because they’re like, we’re in a time In which you know that we’re worried about AI, we’re worried about machines, taking our humanity, whether these worries are founded or not, like people are worried about these things, and then you have this company that’s like, we’re gonna, we’re gonna destroy all the things that breathes life into the arts, into the creative process, into like, the tactile, the analog, it Just like it just hit when they could have run, they could have used the idea of connecting those things, of like, we’re optimizing these things, you know, in a way that takes advantage of nostalgia and celebrates progress. But the whole idea of like, smashing them like that just seemed like  not a smart move.

 

Jason Dressel  39:41

I’m familiar with the creative, and I too thought it sucked. And, you know, and I’m sure you saw this as well, that one of the sort of comments that one creative made on it was basically just taking the ad and playing it in reverse, and then they posted, Hey, Apple, we fit. Your ad, because then it really did kind of accomplish what you’re articulating, because it then showed how the technology was in the kind of evolution of the lineage of these previous technologies, and giving users of the product the ability to, obviously, kind of, you know, use all these previous technologies, but, yeah, you’re right. It was, it was not, not great.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 40:28

And Apple is  normally pretty good at that

 

Jason Dressel  40:34

Yeah, Pretty, pretty good at that. And so it’s a great, it’s a great example that you, that you touch upon so cool well, last, well, I guess before, kind of last question, what? What did you So, any general advice you would offer to listeners listening to this, you know, if you’re, if you’re a leader, thinking about nostalgia as a secret weapon, and you’ve been sort of excited by this conversation, and you’re thinking about how you can apply this in your organization. Any immediate advice, just in terms of how you might recommend someone kind of get started, in addition to, of course, starting with your book,

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 41:12

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the book, in addition to the book, which further self-promotes it’s going to sound like, consider, we’re consulting with a nostalgia expert. I mean, you can, you know, you can go lead, read the literature yourself, of course. But there’s just now, there’s like, you know, hundreds and hundreds, I think I’ve published, I was trying to count the other day. I think I’ve published over 40 academic papers on nostalgia, two books, you know, dozens of op eds, you know, worked with a lot of organizations. So, like, think about that. Okay, now move past the self promotional part and just but, you know, think about it within that like, you can understand that like Target, the need or the goal that you’re working on, and then see, like, Is there research? Is there work in nostalgia that I can surgically use? So for instance, if your organization is going through some kind of massive change and you know, people are kind of workers are resistant to change, you can think about, oh, there’s this work in nostalgia on the concept of continuity, that people are happy to grow. They’re happy to like change as people in a growth direction, but we also want to sense the stability. And so there’s, there’s interesting work on that, like whether you’re moving locations or bringing in a new technology or a new structure to the company, or some kind of organizational change like that, can be very difficult. It can be hard to get your team members on board with that. So how can nostalgia maybe help ease that process and do in a way that doesn’t just make people like, you know, complain about change, but helps them build on, like previous on nostalgic memories and perhaps even previous changes, like, we’ve been through this kind of thing before, and it actually is a strength. It’s an asset that helped our organization grow, and how do we leverage that? So I think being really, really surgical, like, what are your needs? And then maybe there’s some specific area of nostalgia that can be helpful. In addition to that, you know, I think I’ve already mentioned this, but, like, don’t rely on your own, like, intuitions or stereotypes or myths about nostalgia, because, you can really miss the mark on that, like we talked about the Gen Z example. Like, there’s tons of ways in which nostalgia can be useful for different groups  that might not come intuitively to you. And just remember that really, what makes people nostalgic is in our brain level, is some kind of dissatisfaction. Something doesn’t feel right. We’re uncertain, we’re anxious, we’re lonely, we’re bored, you know, we feel like a lack of meaning. We feel disconnected from our identity in some way. And so nostalgia is our brain like working to right the ship and to help us, like, find some inspiration and some guidance. And I think, like, again, leaning into that surgically can be useful for specific goals within an organization

 

Jason Dressel  44:14

Awesome well. And finally, what? What is the Arch Bridge Institute? What is the work that you’re leading at the human flourishing lab, and what is an existential psychologist?

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 44:26

The last question is about my favorite Arch Bridge institutes. You know, it’s, I’m the VP of research at Arch Bridge and the director of the human flourishing lab, where we’re a non-partisan, non profit Washington, D.C based think tank. I actually live in, you know, outside of Bentonville, Arkansas, northwest Arkansas. But our shop is in D.C. And, you know, before, I’ve been with Arch Bridge for two years, full time before I came on board Arch Bridges, focus was really on kind of like, economic policy, sort of things that you kind of think about. The think tank world really revolving around the idea of, like, social mobility. So you know, what are some of the barriers that get in the way of people being able to improve their lives, and, like, climate, income, water, or improve their lives in some other ways? And so there’s a lot of econ heavy sort of stuff, like focusing on things like occupational licensing. Are there well intentioned, but unintentional, you know, like, but bad things that get in the way of people like fulfilling their potential. When I came on board, the idea was to expand beyond economics. Economics are really important, but people, you know, care about other things too. They have psychological they have social needs, spiritual, you know, concerns. So the idea was to take a more holistic approach to human flourishing, looking beyond economics, and focus on these psychological issues so I launched a flourishing lab under Arch Bridge as a way to really focus on that. So I don’t, I don’t do much in the policy or economics area. I really do more on the psychology and cultural side of things like, how can we inspire people? How can we help people reach their full potential? How can we understand people’s needs? How can we study the trends that are happening in society and how that connects to, like, underlying psychological needs and motivations, and basically, help people have full, meaningful, you know, lives, so existential psychologist is someone who really studies the unique complexity of the human condition, and so we’re the as far as we know, humans are the only species that set around and think about our place in the universe while we hear what happens to we when we die. So we can really introspect inward. The reason I got into nostalgia is very much related to my career as an existential psychologist. I was always fascinated with the concept of mental time travel all the way back to my undergraduate days back in the 90s, I was really thinking about how time is something we can measure extremely precisely, but subjectively. It’s a weird experience. Some days feel like they drag on while other other days move fast. So early in my career, I was very much focused on that level, like the subjective experience of time. Then as I got into graduate school and started working on my PhD and getting involved more in the existential psychology side of things, I started to think about, well, people actually mentally time travel. They don’t just live in the present. It’s not just the subjective experience of the present. We project ourselves into the future. That’s what makes us like advanced civilization. We work on projects that won’t be realized for some time, and we delay gratification and the service of those goals. We save money for retirement, not because we don’t like having more money now, but because we can think about the future, and if we can think about the future, that means we can also think about the past. And then I got really interested in that, well, what’s the relationship and what that’s when we started to find it’s like, well, we’re constantly moving forward. We’re constantly thinking about the future, and sometimes that makes us feel uncertain or anxious. The future is not, it hasn’t happened yet. It’s unknown, but the past has already happened. And so as we’re moving forward, dealing with anxieties related to future oriented cognition, perhaps we draw from the past as a way to comfort ourselves, as a way to guide ourselves, as a way to like, figure out what decisions to make, what priorities to have in life. And so, you know, all that happens within our heads is we’re trying to, you know, figure out who we are and what our place in the universe is. And I think nostalgia is very, a very big part of that existential story. 

 

Jason Dressel  48:33

Wow. Well, Clay, thank you so much awesome conversation. Thank you so much for being with us, and congratulations again on the book, and keep up the great work.

 

Dr. Clay Routledge 48:42

Thank you for having me. It’s been great to chat.

 

Jason Dressel  48:49

This concludes this episode of the history factory podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you’re interested in business and history and if you’re just a curious person, I hope that you took away some new insights about nostalgia, a powerful and largely misunderstood emotion. Thanks again to Clay Routledge, thank you so much for listening. I’m Jason Dressel be well.