Hedonic adaptation and the pursuit of retaining happiness — Part 1
Mental tools to gain more from what we already have
“We are rarely satisfied with what we have. Craving for more is the reaction to achievement than satisfaction.”
I sipped my coffee after nearly 100 days. It is a freshly brewed coffee from a gourmet coffee shop. Although I am not a coffee addict, I can still remember that amazing feeling today. I used to drink the same coffee before, but I never felt that good. Since COVID-19 lockdown, I stopped eating and drinking outside. I happened to buy this coffee during the lockdown. So, I paid attention to each sip.
“The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.” -William Irvine.
In his TED Talk, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert cites a study that compares how happiness looks one year after a person wins the lottery (about 314 million dollars) and another becomes a paraplegic (losing the use of their legs). The study finds that “a year after losing the use of their legs and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.”
So, I started looking for a reason for this behaviour. The answer is hedonic adaptation.
Hedonic adaptation
Hedonic adaptation refers to the notion that after something good or bad happens to us with a subsequent increase in positive (or negative) feelings, we return to a relatively stable feeling. In simple words, despite major ups and downs, we return to a stable way of feeling about our lives.
It explains why we find chocolate tastier when we taste it after a long time, why a beach-view house feels very good when we no longer possess it, and why we do not have the same feeling about our spouse now compared to when we met the first few times.
Can happiness be a function of what we already have?
Is there an antidote?
First, we are looking for an antidote to a positive feeling. I don’t think there is an antidote. But there are techniques for getting closer to the positive feeling.
Dan Ariely’s says “Slow down pleasure”
Excerpt from his book, The Upside of Irrationality
A month before graduation, Ann lands an exciting job in Boston. As she looks forward to moving into her first apartment and being paid her first real salary, she makes a list of all the things she would like to purchase. How can she make her purchase decisions in a way that will maximize her long-term happiness?
One possibility is for Ann to take her paycheck (after paying her rent and other bills, of course) and go on a spending spree. She can throw away the hand-me-downs and buy a beautiful new couch, an astronaut-foam bed, the biggest plasma television possible, and even those Celtics season tickets she’s always wanted. After putting up with uncomfortable surroundings for so long, she might say to herself, ‘It’s time to indulge!’ Another option is to approach her purchasing very gradually. She might start with a comfortable new bed. Maybe in six months she can spring for a television and next year for a sofa.
Although most people in Ann’s position would think about how nice it would be to dress up their apartment and so would go on a shopping spree, by now it should be clear that, given the human tendency for adaptation, she would actually be happier with the intermittent scenario. She can get more ‘happiness buying power’ out of her money if she limits her purchases, takes breaks, and slows down the adaptation process.
The lesson here is to slow down pleasure. A new couch may please you for a couple of months, but don’t buy your new television until after the thrill of the couch has worn off.
The opposite holds if you are struggling with economic cutbacks. When reducing consumption, you should move to a smaller apartment, give up cable television, and cut back on expensive coffee all at once — sure, the initial pain will be larger, but the total amount of agony over time will be lower.
Stoics advise using negative visualisation
The idea is to contemplate what you have and visualise your life without it. Stoics did not mean that you cannot indulge yourself. The idea is that when you think something is going to be your last experience, you try to make the most out of it, and thus, you are more motivated to savour it.
“We should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever — nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.” — Seneca
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness — all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law — and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Psychologists found in a study that gave a piece of chocolate and said if that was the last or the next one.
“When you simply tell people something is the last, they may like that thing more.”
Nirvana — If you do not crave, you cannot suffer
Buddha’s idea is that when the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves to retain it or intensify it. And when the mind experiences something unpleasant, it craves to get rid of it. So the mind is always craving — for more pleasure or to get rid of pain.
If you experience pain without craving to get rid of it, you feel the pain but do not suffer from it. Likewise, if you experience pleasure without craving to intensify or extend it, you enjoy it with peace.
How do you avoid craving? Buddha developed a set of meditation techniques for focusing on what you are experiencing now rather than what you want to experience. When you train your mind to reach this state, you reach nirvana. At this state, since you do not crave, you do not suffer.
Japanese Concept of Ichigo Ichie — What we are experiencing right now will never happen again
Excerpt from “The Book of Ichigo Ichie”: “Pronounced ichigo ichie,its meaning is something like this: What we are experiencing right now will never happen again. We must value each moment like a beautiful treasure. We must become moment hunters.”
Rory Sutherland says to put a value to previously discounted and intangible things
Rory Sutherland in his ted talk: “When you place a value on things like health, love, sex and other things, and learn to place a material value on what you’ve previously discounted for being merely intangible, a thing not seen, you realize you’re much, much wealthier than you ever imagined.”
Summary
- We are rarely satisfied with what we have. Craving more is the reaction to achievement, not the reaction to satisfaction.
- The behaviour of returning to a stable way of feeling about our lives, despite major ups and downs, is known as hedonic adaptation.
There are few techniques for getting closer to the positive feeling.
- Dan Ariely says, “Slow down pleasure.” If you have an option to experience multiple things at once, Dan suggests trying one thing first and spacing out the others over time to gain the pleasure of the other things.
- Stoics advise using negative visualisation. The idea is to contemplate what you have and visualise your life without it.
- Buddha suggests meditation techniques for controlling craving. A person who does not crave cannot suffer.
- The Japanese concept of ichigo ichie suggests that what we are experiencing right now will never happen again. We must value each moment like a beautiful treasure.
- Rory Sutherland says to assign a value to previously discounted and intangible things.
I have a few more interesting ideas, which I look forward to sharing in the next part of this blog.
