Unlocking the bitter potential of nostalgia: Covariation between and causal effects of nostalgia on envy.

Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past that is experienced across people from various cultures and across the lifespan. Though nostalgia has typically been conceptualized as a mixed emotion, prior research has primarily focused on positive effects. We hypothesized that nostalgia can additionally have certain negative effects. In particular, nostalgia shares certain features with envy, a negative emotion defined as a resentful longing for another person's fortune, luck, possessions, or attributes. We predicted that nostalgia would be positively related to envy and that nostalgia would increase feelings of envy. In two cross-sectional studies (Studies 1 and 2;