Professional Documents
Culture Documents
According to the hedonic treadmill model, good and bad of Happiness, David Myers (1992) wrote, “The point can-
events temporarily affect happiness, but people quickly not be overstated: Every desirable experience—passionate
adapt back to hedonic neutrality. The theory, which has love, a spiritual high, the pleasure of a new possession, the
gained widespread acceptance in recent years, implies that exhilaration of success—is transitory” (p. 53).
individual and societal efforts to increase happiness are In the original treadmill theory, Brickman and Camp-
doomed to failure. The recent empirical work outlined here bell (1971) proposed that people briefly react to good and
indicates that 5 important revisions to the treadmill model bad events, but in a short time they return to neutrality.
are needed. First, individuals’ set points are not hedoni- Thus, happiness and unhappiness are merely short-lived
cally neutral. Second, people have different set points, reactions to changes in people’s circumstances. People
which are partly dependent on their temperaments. Third, continue to pursue happiness because they incorrectly be-
a single person may have multiple happiness set points: lieve that greater happiness lies just around the corner in
Different components of well-being such as pleasant emo- the next goal accomplished, the next social relationship
tions, unpleasant emotions, and life satisfaction can move obtained, or the next problem solved. Because new goals
in different directions. Fourth, and perhaps most impor- continually capture one’s attention, one constantly strives
tant, well-being set points can change under some condi- to be happy without realizing that in the long run such
tions. Finally, individuals differ in their adaptation to efforts are futile.
events, with some individuals changing their set point and The hedonic treadmill theory is built on an automatic
others not changing in reaction to some external event. habituation model in which psychological systems react to
These revisions offer hope for psychologists and policy- deviations from one’s current adaptation level (Helson,
makers who aim to decrease human misery and increase 1948, 1964). Automatic habituation processes are adaptive
happiness. because they allow constant stimuli to fade into the back-
ground. Thus, resources remain available to deal with novel
Keywords: coping, subjective well-being, life satisfaction,
stimuli, which are most likely to require immediate atten-
adaptation, happiness
tion (Fredrick & Loewenstein, 1999). The happiness sys-
I
tem is thus hypothesized to reflect changes in circum-
magine a world in which the poorest diseased beggar
stances rather than the overall desirability of the
with no family or friends is as happy as the healthy
circumstances themselves. This idea was formalized by
billionaire who has a surfeit of close and supportive
Carver and Scheier (1990), who maintained that emotions
relationships. Or imagine that individuals living in a cruel
depend on the rate of change of important circumstances.
dictatorship where crime, slavery, and inequality are ram-
In 1978, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman of-
pant are as satisfied with their lives as people living in a
fered initial empirical support for the treadmill model. In
stable democracy where crime is minimal. Finally, imagine
studies that have become classics in the field, Brickman et
that no matter how much effort and care someone put into
al. concluded that lottery winners were not happier than
being happy, the long-term effects were no different than if
nonwinners and that people with paraplegia were not sub-
he or she lived a profligate and dissolute life. Implausible?
stantially less happy than those who can walk. Although
These surprising visions are based on a widely accepted
the empirical support for hedonic adaptation was, in fact,
model of subjective well-being. Brickman and Campbell
mixed, the studies captured the attention of psychologists.
(1971) described a hedonic treadmill, in which processes
The idea of hedonic adaptation was appealing because it
similar to sensory adaptation occur when people experience
emotional reactions to life events. Just as people’s noses
quickly adapt to many scents and smells thereafter disap- Ed Diener, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–
pear from awareness, Brickman and Campbell suggested Champaign; Richard E. Lucas, Department of Psychology, Michigan State
that one’s emotion system adjusts to one’s current life University; Christie Napa Scollon, Department of Psychology, Texas
Christian University.
circumstances and that all reactions are relative to one’s Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ed
prior experience. Myers described adaptation as a key to Diener, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 East Daniel
understanding happiness. In his popular book The Pursuit Street, Champaign, IL 61820. E-mail: ediener@uiuc.edu
Note. WVS ⫽ 1990 World Value Survey; VQOL ⫽ first wave of the Victoria Quality of Life Panel Study.
As a final test of the separability of well-being com- One type of evidence demonstrating that life circum-
ponents, we examined the stability of positive and negative stances matter comes from well-being differences across
affect over time in the Victoria Quality of Life Panel Study. nations. If there are strong national differences in well-
We found that, consistent with the idea that there is no being and these differences can be predicted from objective
single set point, the various components exhibited differ- characteristics of those nations, then this would suggest
ential stability. Specifically, long-term levels of negative that the stable external circumstances that vary across na-
affect were substantially more stable than were long-term tions have a lasting impact on happiness. The first column
levels of positive affect. In addition, the stability of positive of Table 2 presents affect balance scores (reported between
affect and life satisfaction declined with longer time peri- 1981 and 1984) for several nations that differed markedly
ods, whereas the stability of negative affect did not (see in affluence and human rights. The right column of Table 2
Table 1). These findings suggest that stable individual
baselines might be more characteristic of negative affect
than positive affect. However, over a period of a few years,
life satisfaction was most stable.
Revision 4: Happiness Can Change Table 1
Stability of Subjective Well-Being Measures in the
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Brickman and Victoria Quality of Life Panel Study and the German
Campbell’s (1971) hedonic treadmill model is the idea that Socio-Economic Panel Study
people cannot do much to change their long-term levels of
Time period between Positive Negative Life Life
happiness and life satisfaction. If the hedonic treadmill measurements affecta affecta satisfactiona satisfactionb
model is correct, adaptation is inevitable, and no change in
life circumstance should ever lead to lasting changes in 2 years .37 .44 .61 .51
happiness. Although the work cited at the beginning of this 4 years .32 .40 .50 .45
article was suggestive of such an effect, until recently very 6 years .32 .42 .44 .41
little evidence has been available to provide longitudinal 8 years .23 .48 .43 .37
tests of this hypothesis. Thus, questions have remained a
Data are from the Victoria Quality of Life Panel Study. b
Data are from the
about the extent to which important life events can perma- German Socio-Economic Panel Study.
nently alter individuals’ happiness set points.
7.5
Life Satisfaction
6.5
Year of Event
6
5.5
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
Year
It should no longer come as a surprise that people direction of the change in life satisfaction varied consider-
living in negative circumstances report well-being scores ably across individuals. For example, Lucas et al. (2003)
that are above neutral. This well-documented fact is inter- found adaptation to marriage at the aggregate level, but
esting and theoretically important, but it should not be used there was a great deal of variability in these effects. Indi-
as evidence that people inevitably adapt. Furthermore, it is viduals who reacted most positively to their marriage
not enough for researchers interested in adaptation to show tended to be above their baseline many years after the
that people who have experienced a negative life circum- event, but these individuals were counterbalanced by those
stance report well-being scores that are higher than what who experienced a lasting decline in satisfaction after their
other people would think they should report (e.g., Brick- marriage. In fact, the standard deviation for the amount of
man et al., 1978; Riis et al., 2005). Such research findings change that occurred after the event was almost as large as
tell more about the average person’s affective forecasting the standard deviation for baseline levels.
errors than about adaptation itself (Gilbert & Wilson, Understanding individual differences in adaptation
2000). To determine whether adaptation has occurred, it is will help illuminate when and why adaptation does or does
necessary to compare individuals who have experienced an not occur. For example, in our study on reaction and
event or life circumstance with those who have not, ideally adaptation to marriage (Lucas et al., 2003), we relied on
following the same individuals over time. laboratory studies of emotional reactivity (e.g., Larsen &
Ketelaar, 1991) to predict that the happiest individuals
Revision 5: Individual Differences in should react most strongly to positive life events. However,
Adaptation
the results showed—somewhat surprisingly—that less sat-
An implicit assumption of the hedonic treadmill theory is isfied individuals were more likely to benefit from marriage
that adaptation to circumstances occurs in similar ways for in the long run. These individuals with initially low base-
all individuals. If adaptation results from automatic and lines reported more positive reactions to marriage, and
inevitable homeostatic processes, then all individuals these positive reactions persisted long into the marriage.
should return to neutrality or at least to their own unique One explanation for this effect is that the most satisfied
baseline. But we have found individual differences in the individuals are more likely than less satisfied individuals to
rate and extent of adaptation that occurs even to the same have strong social support even before the marriage. People
event. In our longitudinal studies, the size and even the who chronically experience many positive events may have