Despite everything, we’re no unhappier than we were a year ago | Tim Adams
Among the stranger pieces of psychological research is the idea of thermostatic contentment or, to give it its fancier title, hedonic adaptation". The original work was led in the 1970s by the US professor Philip Brickman and published under the title Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?
The study examined the effects of extreme life-changing events on perceived contentment. Against all intuitive expectation, it discovered that after a short period of adjustment the reported happiness" of those who had enjoyed a major windfall hardly changed, while those who had suffered an accident still rated themselves above averagely happy. The researchers concluded that happiness adjusted in relation to expectation and that there was a strong genetic element in feelings of contentment.
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