Abstract: Nostalgia is a complex emotional state when someone yearning for the past. It can be positive, negative, or even bittersweet. Nostalgia can be subclassified by taking a social, cultural, or other perspective. Nostalgia can serve as a repository of positive affection, maintain and enhance self-regard, widen someone’ s social connectedness, optimize meaning of life, better the integration of one’s self-concept so adapt to the environment more effectively, and so on and so forth. Methodologically, content analysis, survey, and experimental design are typical approaches in this field. Applied studies have been conducted in the field of marketing, tourism and clinical psychology. It is of great importance to carry out theoretic and application research of nostalgia according to the social, cultural and historical characteristics of China.

Key words: nostalgia, social connectedness, emotion