At least, that’s according to a phenomenon known as “rosy retrospection”. What is “rosy retrospection”? If nostalgia means looking sentimentally and wistfully at the past, “rosy retrospection” is “a bias where individuals judge the past as being disproportionally superior to the present,” a 2022 paper reads. But researchers say rosy retrospection is linked to “denial, discounting, and indifference towards any shortcomings, impediments, or difficulties of associated past events,” and seeing the present world as worse. Why does “rosy retrospection” happen?