Hedonic adaptation
The tendency for emotional responses to positive or negative changes to fade over time, so happiness returns towards a baseline.
What drives it
It protects people from being overwhelmed by events and keeps them striving. It also explains why new possessions and promotions stop delighting.
How it shows
Work
The thrill of a promotion fading within months, then a push for the next one; a new office that soon feels normal; repeated raises that no longer motivate.
Relationships
The early excitement of a new relationship settling into routine; taking a partner for granted.
Self
Notice how quickly a new purchase or achievement becomes ordinary, and whether you are always looking for the next thing.
What tells it apart
Anhedonia: Anhedonia is reduced pleasure across the board, including in new things; adaptation is the fading of pleasure from a specific change over time. Check whether new things still bring pleasure at first.
Contingent self-worth: Contingent worth needs repeated success to maintain esteem; adaptation applies to pleasure from any change. Look at whether the search is for pleasure or for proof of worth.
Mimetic desire (Girard): Mimetic desire is wanting what others want; adaptation is losing interest in what one has. Watch whether the next want is borrowed from others.
A test
Ask the person how they felt about their last big achievement after six months.
Questions to carry
- Six months after the last big achievement, how did it feel compared with the first week?
- What am I chasing now that I expect will finally feel like enough?
How strong the research is
moderate. People adapt quickly to many changes, but adaptation is incomplete for some events such as disability, unemployment and divorce (Lucas, 2007), and the famous lottery winner study was small.
Where it comes from
Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell, 1971; Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, 1978.