Beyond the hedonic treadmill: revising the adaptation theory of well-being.

By E. Diener, Richard E. Lucas, Christie Napa Scollon. American Psychologist, 2006

1,830 citations recorded by the source corpus.

According to the hedonic treadmill model, good and bad events temporarily affect happiness, but people quickly adapt back to hedonic neutrality. The theory, which has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, implies that individual and societal efforts to increase happiness are doomed to failure. The recent empirical work outlined here indicates that 5 important revisions to the treadmill model are needed. First, individuals' set points are not hedonically neutral. Second, people have different set points, which are partly dependent on their temperaments. Third, a single person may have multiple happiness set points: Different components of well-being such as pleasant emotions, unpleasant emotions, and life satisfaction can move in different directions. Fourth, and perhaps most important, well-being set points can change under some conditions. Finally, individuals differ in their adaptation to events, with some individuals changing their set point and others not changing in reaction to some external event. These revisions offer hope for psychologists and policy-makers who aim to decrease human misery and increase happiness.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21443519f39ddf493797508f27eddcf6f77288e2

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Citations in the corpus

The Subjective Wellbeing of High-School Students: Validating the Personal Wellbeing Index—School Children (2011, background): “The view that set-point theory needs revision is shared by Diener et al. (2006) who also noted apparent medium and long term change in set-points in the German panel data.”
Reconsidering happiness: the costs of distinguishing between hedonics and eudaimonia (2008, positive): “Regardless of the domain or time frame under study, the facets of SWB can be assessed with impressive reliability and validity using multi-method approaches, appear to cohere, and show high levels of temporal stability but also sensitivity to intervention efforts (whether intentional or by meaningfu”
Positive emotion regulation and well-being: Comparing the impact of eight savoring and dampening strategies (2010, background): “For example, positive affect tends to decrease over the life span while life satisfaction tends to increase (Diener et al., 2006).”
A review of air pollution impact on subjective well-being: Survey versus visual psychophysics (2018, positive): “A definition given by Diener et al. (2006) is commonly identified by research in this field, which is ‘Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative, that people make of their lives and the affective reactions of people to their experiences.’”
Effect of Changes in Living Conditions on Well-Being: A Prospective Top–Down Bottom–Up Model (2011, background): “A related explanation is that improvements in objective living conditions produce only short-term increases in wellbeing, but that individuals quickly adapt to a higher standard of living (Diener et al. 2006).”
The ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Employee Well-Being: A New Model (2009, background): “... rather than neutral level (e.g., Cummins 1995, 1998); (2) there are considerable inter-individual differences in SWB set-points, largely due to genetic influences; (3) different components of well-being (i.e., positive affect, negative affect and life satisfaction) can move in different directio”
Happiness Adaptation to Income and to Status in an Individual Panel (2010, positive): “17 For example, Diener et al. (2006) argue that people adapt to different baselines, depending on their emotional dispositions. right have real differences in the timing of their income shocks.”
Financial satisfaction over the life course: The influence of assets and liabilities (2011, positive): “However, most researchers now agree that individual well-being is not fixed, but can be influenced by some life circumstances which change over the life course (Diener et al., 2006; Lucas, 2007a; Clark et al., 2008a).”
The Satisfaction With Life Scale and the emerging construct of life satisfaction (2008, background): “For a more complete discussion of contemporary research findings on adaptation, the reader is directed to Diener, Lucas, and Scollon (2006).”