The hedonic treadmill is often used in reference to relative happiness -- usually in a negative context. Hedonic means devoted to pleasure, and if you are on this treadmill you are chasing happiness to no avail. Under this theory, achievement and abundance do not make for happiness, especially if you are a "maximizer" or someone who is driven to seek out the best options in life.
Theory
When your living conditions change, you adapt rapidly to the new circumstances, returning to your personal baseline of happiness. This phenomenon has come to be referred to as the hedonic treadmill, says "Undoing Perpetual Stress" author Richard O'Connor. This is a good thing when your circumstances change for the worse. It helps you deal with a disability or grief, for example. You also return to your baseline when a good thing occurs, such as a pay raise. That means that your perception that you would feel rich when the raise hit is incorrect and you actually don't.
Individual Impact
The hedonic treadmill leads to dissatisfaction when you always want more than you have. If you are like many people in the U.S., you are conditioned to believe that consumerism is the path to being happy. However, the reality is that this path causes stress, O'Connor says. That's because the so-called brass ring is always elusive. The "must-have" item always changes. This likely leads you, when asked, to say that a comfortable income is slightly more than what you have now. But when you work harder to get that little bit extra it's no longer enough. That means you never make enough money to afford what you believe you need, leaving you feeling not only stressed but also inadequate.
Big Picture
Getting more people off the hedonic treadmill is critical to creating a society that is more sustainable, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor John Sterman tells "The New York Times." That's because it drives consumer consumption, which drives use of the earth's resources such as oil. As it stands, people consume natural resources faster than they are generated, including the capacity of the oceans and other environmental sinks to take up greenhouse gasses, wetlands and forests. Reducing material consumption is necessary if we want to stop outstripping our global carrying capacity for such resources, Sterman says in the Aug. 31, 2009 article, "Are You on a Hedonic Treadmill?" by Andrew Revkin.
History
The hedonic treadmill theory originated with a study titled, "Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?" that examined adaptation level theory. The 1978 article was published in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" by authors P. Brickman, D. Coates and R. Janoff-Bulman. The authors found that lottery winners were not happier than non-lottery winners and, in fact, experienced less pleasure from mundane events than their non-winning counterparts. Meanwhile, the paralyzed accident victims in the study were only slightly unhappier than previously, not drastically less happy, despite their largely altered circumstances. Later research confirms such findings, O'Connor notes.
References
- "The New York Times"; Are You on a Hedonic Treadmill"; Andrew C. Revkin; August 2009
- New York Magazine: Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness
- "Undoing Perpetual Stress"; Richard O'Connor; 2006
- "Well Being"; Daniel Kahneman et al.; 2003
- "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology": Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?; P. Brickman et al.; 1978
- The Free Dictionary: Hedonic
