Dr Dougal Sutherland: Why do the "good old days" feel so good?

Why do we remember the “good old days” as being so good?  

In past weeks we’ve touched on events that are blasts from the past, or the good old days. Most people have fond memories of these good old days. Politicians refer to this too to pull on our heartstrings (and votes) e.g., “Make America Great Again” – the inference being that we can make it good like the past.  

So why do the good old days feel so good for most of us?  

Some of this is due to what psychologists call “the reminiscence bump”. It refers to our teenage and early adult years of life when we tend to have stronger memories about our lives and major events in life.  

You can almost date people’s ages by the time of their reminiscence bump – e.g., my teen and young adult years were in the late 80s, early 90s, so my favourite bands are from then (the Smiths), my favourite football team (Liverpool), favourite movie (Goodfellas), or TV shows (Seinfeld). 

Reminiscence bump breaks the general rule of autobiographical memory, which is that we typically have better memory for recent events compared to events that were longer ago. Contrasts with “childhood amnesia” which refers to the fact that we have few memories of our very early years of life. 

Why do we have this bump?  

One theory is that it’s related to the function of autobiographical memory (memory about ourselves and our own lives). This type of memory isn’t meant to be a video recording of our life that we simply tap back into and replay, it’s more about helping shape our view of who we are as individuals – our sense of self.  

In our teens and early adulthood we often are experiencing a number of first-time experiences – our first love, our first concert, going to Uni, or starting a first job.  

These experiences are new and unique and therefore often stand out in our memory. We might also talk about them more with others at the time, which helps us cement them into our memory more as we repeatedly bring them to mind and go over them.  

These first-time experiences help shape our view of who we are, what type of person I am – am I an Oasis fan or a Blur fan? Do I remember when Princess Di died? Do I love or loath the Royal Family?   

It also tends us to give a rosy view of the past because many of our memories from the bump are about new and exciting things.  

Be aware that ads and politicians will try to appeal to this. And remember that someone else’s good old days might be different to yours, but you both think of them as “good”. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks, that'd be Doogle.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Southern from Umbrella Well Being is here with us this
morning and Doogle. We've been reflecting in our music segments
over the last few weeks that there's a real kind
of thing for nostalgia at the moment, whether it's Oasis,
even even bands like Metallica, I think many of us
have a bit of a thing for nostalgia. And you've
been remembering the good old days and remembering and noting

(00:35):
that actually, maybe the good old days are not quite
as good as we necessarily recall.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, I think the fact is that everybody's good old
days are the good old days, and in fact, in
twenty twenty five, as will currently be in the future,
somebody's good old days.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
So we all have.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
This period of our lives sort of you know, mid
to late teens, early adulthood, which most of us look
back fondly on, and most of us have big, sort
of good memories that period. And and you know, you
remember your first kiss, and you remember your first big concert,
and you remember.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Your first this and your first that.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is seductive.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
It is seductive. Absolutely, politicians use.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
It, you know, make America great again, because remember it
used to be great.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Remember in the good old days when it used to
be great. It's not now, is it. And that's that's
the thing that psychologists call the reminiscence bump. So that's
that period of your life, you know, that that that
late that late late teens, early adulthood when we we
pretty much all of us have that sort of just

(01:47):
that general, we have a large amount of memories and
they're often very have a very positive sort of elements
to them, that very nostalgic that we like to look
back on and think of as the good old days
for us.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
It's it's probably because while I'm just guessing here, but
is it because that's when you sort of have your
first sense of independence, that the kind of formative years
professionally or educationally, and that and that Yeah, you know,
I suppose in a relationship sense that you know, you're
experiencing a lot of new things as well.

Speaker 4 (02:20):
Yeah, that's that's right.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
And I think that sort of speaks to what memory
is for or why do we have memory? And and
this sort of memory memory about our own lives is
called autobiographical memory, right, And and it's not the role
of memory, or at least this type of memory isn't
to keep a sort of video recording of our lives
and everything that happens so that we can sort.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
Of go back to it whenever we want.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
One of the big theories is that it's actually our memory,
our autobiographical memories about figuring out who we are and
helping us shape our view of ourselves, so that as
you say, that's when we start having our first serious relationships,
we start our professional careers, and our memories of that
help shape our view of who we are going forward.

(03:05):
Oh yes, i am this, or i am I'm an
Oasis fan or I'm a Blue fan. To you know,
that's a fairly minor example, but you know that it
helps us shape and gives us that sense of who
we are as people. These other things that are important
to me, They have stuck out, These have shaped me
in some ways.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
For these are they are formative identity?

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's a really good way upon it.
The formative identity about us and because they're new and unique.
You know, your first big concert or that first job,
your first car, your first love, you probably have talked
about it and thought about it and remembered about it
a lot, so you keep bringing it back to mind,
and you keep rehearsing it, and so you're keeping it alive,

(03:49):
and you're giving up more attention perhaps than you might
give to other events that have happened in your life. So,
you know, so we're likely to recall it more because
we've practiced and we've rehearsed it more, and because they're
sort of often new and exciting events that have happened
our first times. You know, they tend to give us
that sort of rosy kind of sense of what our

(04:10):
lives were like in the past.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
It's very interesting so and interesting that you focus on
the good things, you know that we kind of we
look at the rosier things. Do you think that maybe
I don't know, maybe there's because I don't want to
say there's less pressure when you're young, because actually a
lot of young people under a huge amount amounts of pressure.
But I suppose you know, if you're eighteen or nineteen,

(04:33):
you're not worried about the mortgage or feeding the treads.
Yeah that's generally speaking, right.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, yeah, typically speaking of you.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean that you know, we do tend to
remember things that stand out, so you know that the
unique then you tend to stand out more for us,
and we tend to rehearse and remember those more than
more than sort of the daily drudgery of sort of
getting up and you know, going to work and having
to pay the bills, which.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Happens over and over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
But it's just not very particularly exciting to think about,
so we don't spend a lot of time thinking about it,
but we do want to spend you know, it excites
us and interests as it makes us feel good when
we remember those first things again, and so yeah, it
helps shape our kind of re memory of who we
are as people and who we are as humans and

(05:25):
our identity of ourselves.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Really, yeah, it's interesting how the new experiences thing kind
of manipulates perceptions. So I read a study recently that
was suggesting that, you know, you know, how it feels
like time is speeding up as you get older.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
But apparently it's not just because everything is relative. You know,
so when you're a kid, you've only if you've only
been a life for five years, you know, one day
as a percentage of life as much. Yeah, but it's
because new experiences. When you are experiencing a new experience,
it doesn't pass with the same speed that the drudge

(06:06):
of repeated experiences password. So for example, right, if you're
just going to work normally for a month, that month
will go really fast. But if you have a month
in which you are backpacking through you know, through the
through the north coast of Spain and then faking in
the Pyrenees or something like that, the actual experience of
that month will take a lot longer because they're all

(06:26):
new experiences.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so yes, yeah, you're bringing them
to mind.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
Well there's a lot more packed in there, isn't there.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah, and you're probably going to be talking about that
and remembering that and looking at photos of that and
sending video clips back and back in the day, you'd
write a postcard about it. So that's and that's all
rehearsing in your memory. So you're all, you know, you're
bringing it every time you bring it to mind. It's
sort of cementing if you like that memory a bit
stronger into your head. So yeah, it sort of fits

(06:56):
with that really, that those sort of new, unique things
we tend to focus on and bring back to mind
more and more, and that just strengthens, strengthens the memory
of it. Yeah, and for the reminiscence bump that, you know.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Which is reminiscence bumpers as late teens, early twenties as
opposed to thirty seven.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, when life, you know, life perhaps doesn't quite have
so many new and exciting things every day. No, no,
you start, you start paying the mortgage and having to
do the vacuuming and clean the bathroom again, washing again,
which don't aren't really particularly memorable or interesting, so we
don't sort of tend to think about them or remember them.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
That's very interesting, Thank you so much too.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Hey, before we go to I do have to say
that I gleefully disregard rules of grammar and English good,
and simply don't care about them at all.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Good. I'm glad. I'm glad you're you're the first person
to actually write in and say that this morning, to
offer that up. I'm very pleased that someone has taken
a contrarian position, because actually it's incredibly snobbish of the
reason well to be sitting here all high and mighty.
I mean, you go and look at Shakespeare's English, look
at how much the language changed in the last few
hundred years. And you know, language is always morphing and evolving.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
It is a look.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
In my case at dates back the fact that my
mum was a speech teacher, so we always had these
rules sort of religiously drilled into us. And so part
of my teenage rebellion was not caring about those rules,
which wasn't really much of a rebellion at all really.
But no, but yeah, so I just don't I don't mind, really,
but I appreciate the fact that some people do.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Look, I can assure you that not just some people
do many many people do this.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
It sounds like it from all the activity on the text.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yes, yeah, hey, thank you so much. I have a
great reek of kedging is a doogle? Let us doggle
Sutherland from Umbrella Well Being.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to news talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
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