Behavioral New World--The Happiness Roller Coaster
The Happiness Roller Coaster
November 1, 2020
Do you remember a time, as a child, when you really, really wanted that special “thing,” maybe a telescope? And with your birthday or the holidays coming up, you think, “Maybe I’ll get it then.” And when you do get it, what a thrill! You can see the craters on the moon! And you know that amateur astronomers have played a major role in discovering new comets. Soon there’ll be a comet with your name on it!
But over time, the thrill wears off. A few months later, the thrill is almost completely gone. Aside from using the telescope occasionally to spy on your neighbor, it is not used at all. You rode the happiness roller coaster up and then back down to the level where you started. You begin to really, really want the next special thing.
What’s going on here? It is the phenomenon called “hedonic adaptation.” “Hedonic” refers to pleasant (or unpleasant) sensations. “Adaptation” refers to the human tendency to habituate to sources of pleasure or displeasure—simply put, you get used to them. Two further psychological phenomena are generally considered to be the engines of hedonic adaptation: internal recalibration and external comparisons. There’s much connection between the two but they are worth exploring separately.
Internal recalibration. Suppose that you win the lottery, a dream shared by many. You will, of course, be ecstatic upon learning of your win. You can now afford almost anything, a private jet perhaps? You will also have the satisfaction of reporting your win to those people who advised you never to buy lottery tickets.
But adaptation sets in. The spike in happiness wears off and you drift back toward your previous level of happiness.(1) One writer puts it this way: “If we fulfill a desire, we’re happy for a brief moment, but the nature of fulfilling one desire is immediately to find another one, and another one, and another one.”(2) Maybe that’s a bit strong—the “brief moment” can be a year or longer, but the happiness spike does fade.(3)
Bad news—no permanent ecstasy for you then, at least not via the path of desire fulfillment. But the flip side of hedonic adaptation is good news—when something horrible happens to you, your happiness can rebound. Perhaps the most striking evidence of this phenomenon is that paraplegics report happiness levels that are not much lower than the happiness levels of the population at large, once the early stages of physical recovery have passed. People are more emotionally resilient than we realize.
External comparisons. You have probably heard the phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” The phrase refers to our tendency to compare ourselves with our neighbors, figurative or literal. When your neighbor Jones gets a new car, your own car begins to look a little shopworn and the urge to buy a new one grows—or so it is for many people.(4) Then Jones has the gall to put a swimming pool in her backyard, and suddenly you might wonder how you’ve gotten along all these years without one yourself. Thus starts a seemingly never-ending cycle of dysfunctional thinking.
To make matters worse, the Joneses don’t even have to be people in your neighborhood. In fact, they don’t even have to be real. According to researcher Juliet Schor of Boston College, “Television viewing results in an upscaling of desire. And that in turn leads people to buy.”(5) Characters in sitcoms, not to mention the manufactured personalities of reality TV, can have enormous influence via their clothes, possessions, and lifestyles. Schor estimates that every hour of TV watching per week boosts spending by approximately $200 a year per viewer!
What to do with this knowledge? First, know that when setbacks occur, chances are you will rebound; the passage of time will help. Second, stop working so hard to find happiness via fulfilling one desire after another. Recognize that a new gadget will only get you temporary satisfaction and might weaken your financial health.
Third, you can employ a technique called “negative visualization.”(6) Put briefly, you identify something good in your life and then imagine what your life would be like if it were gone. This practice allows you to focus on and appreciate the good things in your life. It is also somewhat of a dress rehearsal for negative events.
Fourth, you can be intentional about choosing to whom you compare yourself. For example, if you live in the United States, it is likely that you have a better quality of life than the vast majority of people who have ever lived on the planet. Jones is just riding the happiness roller coaster up and down—no need to keep up with her.
And to be clear: I’m not saying that you should never get on the happiness roller coaster. Sometimes the happiness spike is worth it. But I am saying that you shouldn’t expect the roller coaster to lift you to lofty happiness heights and keep you there. And unlike a real roller coaster, the ride down isn’t a big thrill.
See, for example, https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/winning-the-lottery-will-not-make-you-rich-or-happy-6d52f2f99348. In the spirit of transparency, there is a study using Swedish data that suggests that there is a persistent positive effect on “life satisfaction”, but not happiness, from winning the lottery: https://time.com/5427275/lottery-winning-happiness-debunked/
Nothing Special: Living Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck, p. 124. Whenever I recount this research, the audience reaction is always: “Well, that wouldn’t happen to me, not if I won the lottery.” But there is every indication that it would.
Nearly a third of jackpot winners in the United States end up declaring bankruptcy. Source: the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards.
Joshua Shemesh and Fernando Zapatero, “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy (Suburban) Neighbor’s Car” (working paper, University of Southern California).
This quote is from CNNMoney.com. The research can be found in Schor’s The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999).
William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. For more details, see Chapter 1 of my book, The Foolish Corner.