Hedonistic treadmill

Under hedonistic treadmill (also hedonistic adaptation ) refers to the tendency of people to return to a strong positive or negative life event relatively quickly at a relatively stable level of happiness or happiness. It is the subject of investigation in happiness research , positive psychology , as well as in parts of economics, e.g. B. Behavioral Economics . It's kind of a set point theory of happiness.

The term was already used in 1971 in the essay Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society by Brickmann and Campbell. During the 1990s, the concept was modified by the British psychologist Michael Eysenck to the now known hedonistic treadmill theory , which compares the pursuit of happiness to a treadmill: You work on it all the time and yet stay in the same place.

The hedonistic treadmill tries to explain, among other things, why more prosperity or more income does not make people happier in the expected way ( Easterlin paradox ). A study by Brickmann, Coates and Janoff-Bulman found that lottery winners are on average no happier than people who did not win the lottery. Furthermore, the lottery winners are only a little happier than people who have been paralyzed by an accident.

An even earlier work on the level of adjustment and the "subjective zero point" can be found in Helson (1898–1977).

See also

• satisfaction

literature

• Michael W. Eysenck : Happiness: Facts and Myths . Psychology Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0863771347 , pp. 94ff.
• Mathias Binswanger: The treadmills of happiness: We always have more and we don't get happier. What can we do? . 7th edition. Herder Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3451058097 .

Web links

• News from the hedonistic treadmill: The development of happiness from utopia to science - Article at TAZ, November 1, 2005

Individual evidence

1. ^ P. Brickman, DT Campbell: Hedonic relativism and planning the good society . In: MH Appley (Ed.): Adaptation-level theory . New York 1971, pp. 287-305.
2. ↑ Happiness is a marathon, not a sprint ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Article in The Sydney Morning Herald , October 9, 2010.  
3. ↑ Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? - Summary of the English study in German. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
4. ↑ David G. Myers: Psychology . 2nd expanded and updated edition, Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-3540790327 , p. 581.