It turns out that people are remarkably resilient after divorce-including the children. That’s not true of every bad event-a couple of recent studies have shown that people who have experienced severe disability do adapt to some extent, but they never go back to the original baseline of happiness, and the same is true of bereavement at a later age.īut on average, people don’t seem miserable for as long as we think they do. We are really good at adapting to negative changes. So if we got a divorce we would be unhappy forever-if our spouse died, if we got ill, if our dreams don’t become fulfilled, then we would die unhappy.īut hedonic adaptation takes place in response to negative experiences as well, which contributes to our resilience. That’s the myth that a lot of things would make us really unhappy, maybe forever. We were just talking about the first myth of happiness, but there is a second. But there’s a flip side to that story, which speaks more to human resilience. It suggests that no matter how hard you push, you’re always going to wind up in the same place. Hedonic adaptation is also called the hedonic treadmill-and that sounds kind of negative. JM: And that adaptation can lead to neglect or dissatisfaction. Lyubomirksy's new book, The Myths of Happiness. You stop paying attention to them, and that’s when we have adapted. And so when things are the same, when stimuli are constant, we don’t tend to notice them or pay attention to them very much.īut the downside of hedonic adaptation is that when a relationship becomes familiar-or when a job becomes familiar, or when your new car becomes very familiar to you-then you start taking the spouse or job or car for granted. That might be because in our ancestral environment, it was important to us to be vigilant or alert to change-a change in the environment might signal a threat, or it could signal a reward or opportunity for reward. It is evolutionarily adaptive, and perhaps hardwired, so all of us get used to the familiar. Hedonic adaptation means that humans beings are remarkable at getting used to changes in their lives. I will say that the psychological phenomenon hedonic adaptation-which is a big theme of my book-does strongly affect our ideas of what makes us happy. I don’t know whether they’re hardwired or evolutionarily adaptive. SL: Wow, that’s a good question! I do think media and the culture propagate these myths. JM: Are these myths just a product of the media-or do you think they might be rooted in certain innate, perhaps psychological, propensities? The same thing goes for our jobs, or the amount of money we make. But because our culture holds passionate love up as an ideal, we think that there must be something wrong with us when our relationships aren’t as exciting to us a few years later than they were at the beginning. If love survives, it tends to turn into what’s called “companionate love,” which is really more about deep friendship and loyalty. We also know that passionate love-the love that media and movies and literature tell us that we should all be experiencing-tends to dissipate over time. The problem is that those events do make us happy-but they don’t make us as happy as we hope, or for as long as we think they will.įor example, marriage does make people happy, but the most famous study on marriage shows that the happiness boost only lasts for an average of two years. The first is the idea that if we’re not happy now, then we will become happy when x, y, and z happens: When I get married I’ll be happy, when I strike it rich I’ll be happy, when I have kids, when I move to that city I’ve always wanted to live in. Sonja Lyubomirsky: There are really two categories. Can you give us an example of the kind of myth you’re talking about? Jason Marsh: Your book is called The Myths of Happiness. Below we present a condensed version of the discussion. You can listen to the interview here, and we encourage you to subscribe to the podcast series through iTunes. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.Īs part of our Greater Good Podcast series, she recently spoke with Editor-in-Chief Jason Marsh about why we are so often mistaken about what will make us happy-and how we can really achieve happiness.
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