retrospection
Retrospection is the act of looking back on past events, experiences, or states of affairs, with or without emotional content. The word comes from Latin retro-, meaning back, and specere, meaning to look. In psychology, retrospection involves the retrieval and evaluation of autobiographical memories. It can be voluntary, as when a person reflects on a decision, or involuntary, when memories surface without deliberate effort. Retrospection engages memory reconstruction, interpretation, and meaning-making, and it can elicit a range of emotions from nostalgia to regret. Because memory is fallible, retrospective judgments are susceptible to biases such as hindsight bias, presentism, and memory distortion.
Across domains, retrospection serves different purposes. In history and literary criticism, it denotes reflective analysis of
Retrospection is often contrasted with nostalgia, which is a longing for the past rather than a critical