Sunday Morning Nostalgia

Today I woke to the familiar sounds of, "Sunday Morning," a CBS program I watched growing up. The show today had a segment on Nostalgia: Power of the "Good Old Days." Although nostalgia has for many years been used as a marketing tool, Lemoyne College psychology professor Krystine Batcho, suggests that nostalgia can actually be used as a personal tool of hope during unfortunate times, "If right now everything is terrible and bleak, if you're out of work and you can't pay your mortgage and you've been evicted and you think, 'there's nowhere for me to turn,' it is actually healthy to look to the past and to say, 'What else have I survived before?'" One of the quickest ways to be whisked off to the past is through scent, asserts Neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch. Further, sense of smell is, "Not only a direct path to the brain, but a direct path to the emotional areas of the brain. The quickest way to change somebody's mood, state of behavior, quicker than with any other sense modality, is with smell," says Hirsch. I've personally noted a very uniquely scented lotion that I bought in Disneyland when I was a small child has the power to transport me to that time and place. When the sent of that little glass bottle fills my nose, I FEEL like a kid again.

read the CBS post here

questions to ponder

Which are the important things that surround us, the things we don’t want to live without, the things we personally connect to. What allows someone to develop a personal, emotional connection with an object? Are there similarities from one person to the next? Through knowing this information, can products be designed sensitive to this personal dialogue, resulting in more valuable objects?