Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?. Journal of personality and social psychology, 36(8), 917.
Note: This study doesn’t seem to hold quite the water it used to (most likely due to its small sample size and lack of longitudinal sampling), though its central message of hedonic adaptation still seems relevant. Specifically, lottery winners seem to show a lagged increase in well-being (see Winkelmann et al. 2015 “What happens to people after winning the lottery” and Eckblad & von der Lippe 1994 “Norwegian lottery winners: Cautious realists”). Plus, I thought the experimental design was unique and interesting. Finally, this paper is different from my perceptions of it, based on other people talking about it (I think it’s frequently misquoted).
Summary
Adaptation level theory states that evaluation of current stimuli is dependent on comparison to past experienced stimuli (see also todo:peak end theory), especially stimuli to which a subject has habituated. Adaptation happens because of contrast and habituation. Contrast refers to an extreme stimuli or experience that is different from those previously experienced (or baseline) stimuli. Habituation refers to a repeated stimuli whose contrast is gradually lessened. These concepts are tested by comparing a control group with a group of lottery winners and a group of accident victims who were now paraplegic or quadriplegic.
There was no difference in current or predicted happiness between the control group and the lottery winners. Lottery winners did find ordinary activities as less pleasurable, which the authors hypothesize is the result of the enormous contrast provided by winning the lottery. A second study found no discernible difference between lottery buyers and non-buyers in present happiness or pleasure derived from daily activities, further strengthening the results and interpretation from the first study.
Interestingly, the lottery winners did not consider winning the lottery to be “the best thing that could happen to them,” neither did accident victims consider their crippling accidents to be “the worst thing that could happen to them.” This does lend credence to the idea of habituation. The authors close by citing several examples of happiness holding constant despite a number of varying conditions (e.g., poverty, blindness, 1940s vs 1970s).
Application
If things seem bad, don’t worry - you’ll get used to it. Conversely, if things seem good, don’t worry - you’ll get used to that too. Also, another Brickman article is cited that states that in a group of people who were all relatively equal, disadvantaging one person caused everyone else to feel better. Conversely, in a group of equals, advantaging one person caused everyone else to feel worse. Kind of grim, but it seems to have some small managerial applicability.
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