The Hedonic Treadmill and Experiencing Greater Happiness
The Science of Mood, Explained
Why is it we can buy new things, or engage in something that increases our mood momentarily but soon find ourselves reverting to how we felt before?
For some, it can seem like no matter what they do, their mood always returns to baseline. Despite how good things appear to be, it’s only a matter of time before normality takes place and the same mood returns again, a familiar reminder that they will always return to how they felt before.
The Hedonic Treadmill theory was first put forth by Brickman & Cambell in their 1971 paper, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society” to describe how human’s, when subjected to either positive or negative stimuli, react accordingly momentarily but eventually return to their baseline levels of happiness, or unhappiness.
Be it a lottery win that overjoys someone, or a terrible accident that knocks them back, Brickman and Cambell concluded “lottery winners and accident victims both returned to their pre-event happiness levels within a few months or years” attesting to our abilities to adjust to whatever life throws our way.
The process of mood adaptation makes sense in principle, as to be constantly overjoyed or distraught by something would leave us blind to…
