Life on the Hedonic Treadmill
We all know people who are hedonists; they can never get enough of the good life. In fact, lasting happiness is difficult to achieve because people are on a “hedonic treadmill.” Although a change in a person’s circumstances may cause him to be happier (e.g., finding a partner, winning the lottery) or sadder (e.g., losing a job, becoming paralyzed), a broad body of research has shown that people tend to return to their previous level of happiness after such events.29 In fact, studies of lottery winners and spinal cord injury patients reveal that after a year or two, they are often no more happy or sad than the rest of us. Our surprise at this observation stems in part from our inability to anticipate that some things will not change. Lottery winners still have annoying relatives, and paralyzed patients can still fall in love. As psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown, we tend to focus on only the most salient part of a situation when we are thinking about things that might befall us.30 Moreover, we overlook our ability to adapt to circumstances. So, a person trying to become happier is like someone walking up a downward-moving escalator. Although the effort to climb up and become happier is helpful, it is counteracted by the process of adaptation that forces one back to one’s original state.
Many people try to overcome this problem by intentionally engaging in activities to improve their happiness. We might change our behavior by exercising regularly or by trying to be kind to others or even by avoiding a long commute (which has been shown to be particularly deleterious to happiness). We might change our attitude by pausing to count our blessings or thinking about experiences in the most positive light (as Tibetan monks do). We might also devote effort to causes we find meaningful or strive to achieve important personal goals. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that a sustained effort to engage in such happiness-producing activities might help us progress up the downward-moving escalator.
But in spite of these efforts, each of us tends to stay put in a particular long-term disposition; we appear to have a set point for personal happiness that is not easy to change. In fact, like other personality traits, personal happiness appears to be strongly influenced by our genes. Studies of identical and fraternal twins show that identical twins are significantly more likely to exhibit the same level of happiness than are fraternal twins or other siblings. Behavior geneticists have used these studies to estimate just how much genes matter, and their best guess is that long-term happiness depends 50 percent on a person’s genetic set point, 10 percent on their circumstances (e.g., where they live, how rich they are, how healthy they are), and 40 percent on what they choose to think and do.31 What we experience in life can, of course, change our moods for a period of time, but in most cases these changes are transitory.
What about the network spread of happiness? Does it obey this constraint, only making us happy for a while? Does the effect of having a friend become happy tend to wear off? In our study, we found that a person is 45 percent more likely to be happy if a friend became happy in the previous six months. In contrast, the effect is only 35 percent for friends who became happy within the previous year, and it disappears after longer periods of time. So, our friends’ happiness does have an effect on us, but it only lasts for about a year. Just as lottery winners get used to their newfound wealth, we get used to our friends being happy. But if different friends get happy at different points in time, they might give us a periodic boost, helping us to stay above our natural level of happiness.
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