When Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, in The House of the Dead, that “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” he was talking about the cruelties and deprivations of life in Siberian prison camp. But the human tendency to adapt or “get accustomed” to situations is more profound than even Dostoyevsky may have realized.
Imagine a person who, after years of drinking bland, watery beer from a mass-market brewery, finally tastes a really good craft beer. At first she notices the intensity of the flavor. A few more sips and she comes to appreciate the beer’s complexity and the exquisite balance between bitterness and sweetness. The craft beer is so much more flavorful than what she has been used to drinking, and the experience is highly enjoyable. But check in after a few months when she has been drinking the craft beer on a regular basis. Something has changed. The experience is no longer as special as it was at first. It now takes an even greater taste sensation to yield the same thrill our beer drinker experienced the first few times she tried the craft beer.
We adapt. A great pleasure, repeated often enough, becomes routine, and it takes an even greater treat to give us the same enjoyment. When we get used to having more, it takes more to please us. (Conversely, when we get used to having less, it takes less to please us.) This is the known as the “hedonic treadmill.” It’s analogous to the well-known tendency to adapt to physical stress. When you first start lifting weights, for example, a relatively light weight might be all it takes to start putting on muscle. But once the body adapts to that exercise, heavier and heavier weights will be needed to keep getting stronger.
The idea of the hedonic treadmill can apply to discrete pleasures—like getting accustomed to better beer—or it can apply to an overall lifestyle. There is evidence that if an individual’s basic needs are met, after a certain point, increases in income do not lead to much greater happiness. As the money we have to spend goes up, so too do our expectations and desires—and with them the possibility of disappointment. A now-classic study from 1978 compared the happiness of lottery winners with a control group drawn from the same neighborhoods. The researchers interviewed lottery winners after the initial thrill had worn off. When asked to rate their present level of happiness, the lottery winners answered in the same way as did the control group. The two groups also made similar predictions about their future happiness. And when asked about a number of mundane pleasures—talking with a friend or eating breakfast—the lottery winners actually derived less pleasure than did the control group.
Maybe those lottery winners weren’t more happy because they spent their winnings on the wrong things. A 2011 survey of the available empirical research indicates that spending money on experiences (for example, vacations, dance classes, or nights out with friends) makes people more happy than does spending money on material goods. One of the reasons is that, while we quickly adapt to that new handbag or pair of shoes, a good experience provides a happy memory that can be revisited again and again, with less threat of adaptation.
