ABSTRACT
I magine you are walking through your neighborhood on a breezy spring after-noon and you see a child running excitedly after a ball tossed from a friend. You begin to think about your own childhood and perhaps bask in the glow of the bygone days of frivolous play and exuberance. What are the cognitive abilities that enable, and the psychological functions served by, such nostalgic reflection? More broadly, what is the relationship between affective states and self-processes? In entertaining such questions, one may be surprised to learn that contemporary social psychological discourse offers few answers. The purpose of the present chapter is to provide a broad overview of the relationship between affective states and the self, and then illustrate the interplay of affect and self-processes through a special kind of self-related affective state, nostalgia.
