“People were kinder when I was a kid!” “We could sleep with the doors unlocked back then!” “There was justice and respect for others!” You have surely heard something like that yourself. You have very likely seen people making such claims, usually followed by the response “OK, boomer!” This phenomenon is called rosy retrospection.
In social psychology, rosy retrospection is defined as the tendency to view the past in a disproportionately positive light, filtering out the negative aspects and highlighting the positives. It’s a confirmation bias expression. And as any confirmation bias, it can be extremely insidious, with far-reaching repercussions.
So, to figure all this out myself, in this post I’m taking a closer look at rosy retrospection: what it is, its connection with nostalgia, what is said (and what is not, which is as critical), and the repercussions it has for all of us.
