“Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you think
’Sure, she's got everything’
I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I've got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more...”Part of Your World - The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid Ariel had everything she could ever want. Not only did she have whozits and whatzits, but she also had several sisters, a caring father, fish friends, and crustacean servants. She was a princess living in luxury. But she wanted more…
We flipper-less humans suffer the same anxieties: we acquire more things, we get the job we wanted, we get the kids and the spouse and the big ol’ house, and yet somehow we remain unsatisfied. But why?
Enter the hedonic treadmill, also known as “Hedonic Adaption:”
Hedonic adaptation refers to the notion that after positive (or negative) events (i.e., something good or bad happening to someone), and a subsequent increase in positive (or negative) feelings, people return to a relatively stable, baseline level of affect (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006).
This is similar to the concept of “diminishing marginal utility:”
Diminishing marginal utility refers to the phenomenon that each additional unit of gain leads to an ever-smaller increase in subjective value.
The more you get the less you value it over time.
The more you get the more you want.
We seem hardwired to think this way. We find a new equilibrium, get bored, and seek out new things that will make us happy.
There are evolutionary theories for why hedonic adaption occurs:
Intense sensations are costly in terms of energy. The brain of an average adult human represents approximately 2% of the total body weight while still consuming approximately 20% of the energy (Perez-Truglia, 2012).
Intense sensations diminish awareness. For instance, if eating an apple put us into an intense period of euphoria, we would not be able to focus properly and would be an easy target for predators.
We a have limited range of perceptual sensitivity based on the stimulation and firing of nerves cells, and hedonic adaptation helps us to make better choices by being better able to discriminate between the options available (Rayo and Becker, 2007).
As Perez-Truglia (2012) argues the optimal solution to this problem, from nature’s perspective, is to adjust the individual’s utility function by her expectations so that experienced utility depends on the difference between what she expected and what actually occurred. This avoids the above three costs whilst at the same time allowing the individual to still be rewarded for things that aid gene propagation.
Heightened sensations and emotions (either positive or negative) will throw us off our game when we are thrust into a new, sudden and dangerous situation, so nature made us (and our brains) revert to a new equilibrium depending on what we consistently experience. Without that, we wouldn’t be able to adapt or survive.
The problem of course is that when hedonic adaption strikes we feel stuck and can get depressed because we’re not moving forward anymore. We can win the game, achieve our goals and feel like there’s no point in playing anymore.
In our society, we feel the need to combat this with novel things. Unfortunately those things tend to be material possessions which actually tend to have the opposite intended effect: making us more unhappy.
In other words, feelings of low self-esteem may fuel the desire for material goods that we think will make us happy and symbolize success. But when those goods fail to live up to our expectations, we feel even more dissatisfied, and the pattern of wanting and buying continues.
And initially, it does give you a jolt of joy—until you want the next best thing.
So how do we keep ourselves from suffering from the hedonic treadmill? Psychology Today and VeryWellMind have some good recommendations:
Mix it up. Go off the beaten path. Have positive experiences outside your normal day-to-day to make life appear less repetitive.
Gratifications: facing a challenge that takes work but is achievable for you. Something where you forget about the passage of time and can get lost in it (like writing a silly-serious newsletter about Mermaids, Mandalorians, being eaten by giant birds, and either having enough or making as much money as you can.)
Small pleasures: If you like getting that cup of $3 coffee, just buy the damn coffee. It’s worth it as long as you continue to appreciate the small things.
Make time for hobbies. Something that you don’t normally get to do in your daily life but that you enjoy and helps you grow.
Altruism: helping others or volunteering. Making the world a better place never gets old.
Appreciate life more and realize what a miracle it is to be alive.
Kind of like this rabbit:
That’s some good fucking shit.
Wait a minute, was Ariel right after all?
There’s actually one more thing you can do to get off the hedonic treadmill, something that both Ariel and millennials are known for: investing in new experiences.
New and diverse experiences are linked to enhanced happiness, and this relationship is associated with greater correlation of brain activity, new research has found. The results, which appear in the journal Nature Neuroscience, reveal a previously unknown connection between our daily physical environments and our sense of well-being.
"Our results suggest that people feel happier when they have more variety in their daily routines--when they go to novel places and have a wider array of experiences," explains Catherine Hartley, an assistant professor in New York University's Department of Psychology and one of the paper's co-authors. "The opposite is also likely true: positive feelings may drive people to seek out these rewarding experiences more frequently."
So maybe I’m the one who’s wrong here.
Let’s look at the next part of that song I mentioned at the beginning:
. . .
I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see them dancin'
Walking around on those - what do you call 'em?
Oh - feet!
Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumping, dancing
Strolling along down a - what's that word again?
Street!
Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free - wish I could be
Part of that worldPart of Your World - The Little Mermaid
She wanted more than the life she had because she had become stuck on a hedonic treadmill of her own. Her solution wasn’t to buy and collect more things though, she had already tried that. Her solution was to create new experiences!
So maybe you SHOULD listen to the Little Mermaid. I think she’s on the right track.
Thanks for reading!