What Goes Around Comes Around: the Neuroscience Behind ‘90s Nostalgia

It seems at least once a week I see another article about a brand tapping into ’90s nostalgia, or a think-piece trying to explain the phenomenon of all this nostalgia. You’ve probably seen it too: Pepsi reviving Crystal Pepsi for a limited time, Michelob Ultra teaming up with the arcade game NBA Jam, Lisa Frank-themed blenders, ’90s throwback apparel in Gap’s spring line, and so on.

Pop culture examples abound as well. There’s a resurgence of interest in The Babysitters Club – not just the Netflix reboot but an essay anthology on the series came out last year; NBC’s Peacock rebooted Saved By the Bell, and is now reimagining The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in a new show called Bel-Air, this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, a new entry in The Matrix film franchise, among others.

Many articles out there trying to explain this fascination with the ’90s posit that all this nostalgia is because Gen Xers and/or Millennials came of age in the ’90s and, thanks to the internet, can reminisce like no generations before. They’re not wrong, but this is also not new or unique to Millennials. Nor does it explain why Gen Z is all-in on ’90s throwbacks. There’s something bigger going on here.

The Cultural Cycles Model

Earlier this year, my colleague Hunter Thurman wrote a piece for GreenBook which introduced the concept of ‘cultural cycles’. It’s a model derived from our team of veteran neuroscientists led by Sigi Hale, Ph.D. that combines aspects of both neural-network theory and sociology.

In a nutshell, it frames the three cultural mindsets (or mind-states) that we humans continually rotate through: Belong, Rebel, and Explore. This cycling occurs on the micro and the macro level, and society tends to flow from one mindset into the next about every decade.

The 2020s, ushered in by COVID, happen to be the next decade of Exploration, in which we’ll seek out new, personalized ways of living and interacting. As there are three mindsets that keep cycling, if you do the math, you’ll find that the last decade of exploration was – you guessed it – the 1990s.

It didn’t take much Google searching to find that the idea of a nostalgia ’30-year cycle’ or pendulum is already well-established, at least for film and TV. The widely accepted explanation for this is, essentially, that the Gen Xers and Older Millennials who grew up in the ’90s are now the content creators, brand managers, and so on, as well as consumers with deep pockets. This is certainly a piece of the puzzle.

However, I would argue that our mindset cycles are another powerful explanatory variable here, and that looking at nostalgia through this model makes this cycle not just an interesting phenomenon, but also a predictable indicator of consumer preferences, informed by neuroscience and wired into our experience.

Explaining ’90s nostalgia with the Cultural Cycles Model

The Explore cycle lens suggests the neuropsychology-based role of today’s ’90s nostalgia is to look back at the last time we set out on a journey of discovery. We reminisce to remind ourselves of what we found last time, to look at it with the benefit of time (and the ensuing Belong and Rebel decades that followed it), and see what we can rediscover about it now. Does it hold up? How does it need to change to incorporate and expand on what we’ve learned since then? What does it inspire us to go discover now?

Granted, these cycles aren’t perfectly in lockstep with the decades. And not every nostalgia example is going to fit cleanly (Apple TV currently rebooting my beloved 1980s Fraggle Rock for example, or the 1960s-set Mad Men in the 2010s). However, no model’s r² = 1.0. Overall, the explanatory (and predictive) power of this cultural cycles lens is notable, and what we’re currently nostalgic for can tell us something about what new things we are likely to want and value.

So what?

Thinking about the nostalgia cycle through this mindsets lens is powerful because it provides insight for innovation. Considering what people will be nostalgic for in each era reveals a lot about what types of products and messages will likely resonate with them as they move through a cultural cycle. Looking back at some of the things that happened/were popular in the ’90s can be predictive of consumer sentiments we’ll see in this decade of discovery:

1. Frustration with / rejection of “mainstream” ideas of work and success.

Some of the now-classic films from the 1990s (1994’s Reality Bites, 1999’s Fight Club and Office Space), portrayed frustration with the drudgery of the corporate world and/or capitalist consumerism. Viewed in this light, The Great Resignation takes on a new resonance, no?

Go listen to Tyler Durden’s fight club speech again – couldn’t he be saying the same thing today to a group of disgruntled employees who’ve been working from home and mindlessly shopping online, or deemed ‘essential’ yet paid peanuts for years now?

2. Seeking “healthier” or “better for you” food and beverages.

While it failed spectacularly, recall that the thinking behind “Crystal Pepsi” was to make the drink more “natural” by removing its artificial ‘cola’ color (as well as its preservatives and caffeine). Similarly, the ’90s saw a massive “low fat” craze in packaged foods (remember SnackWells? Or God forbid, Olestra?).

At the time, consumers were seeking out healthier products driven by the (faulty) belief that “low fat = healthier”. Today’s idea of ‘better for you’ has expanded as we’ve learned more about what’s actually good for us. Especially after two years of pandemic-induced “comfort snacking”, we are, not surprisingly, seeing more health and wellness products trying to serve consumers’ desire for ‘functional ingredients’, plant-based, etc. So, the question brand managers need to ask is, how to ensure that ‘plant-based’ doesn’t become the next ‘low-fat’, an idea that 30 years from now we’ll look back on while shaking our heads in bemused disbelief?

3. A proliferation of “beyond beer” alternatives.

Another short-lived ’90s “clear” beverage was Zima, billed as an alternative to beer, whose sales were declining among key demographics. And while it’s certainly the best-remembered, Zima wasn’t the only one. Miller tried and failed spectacularly with Clear Beer, and Pabst and Stroh’s also got in the game. Does this remind you of the proliferation of hard seltzers today? While it turned out a clear beer wasn’t exactly what consumers wanted, Zima and its competitors paved the way for other beer alternatives like Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice, and Bacardi Silver, making today’s ‘beyond beer’ market sound rather unoriginal.

Conclusion

Particularly in recent years, it can feel like we’re the first people to experience a given cultural force. But neuroscience reveals that, as Mark Twain put it: “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.