Today’s Goals

  • Mini review: Happiness
  • Catch up on happy people
  • Review history of ‘hedonic treadmill’
  • Understand current state of adaptation research
  • Consider intentional happiness change
  • Become familiar with exercises
  • Understand factors important to effectiveness

 

Mini review: Happiness

  • Give an example of hedonic motives; Eudaimonic motives

Hedonic: doing something to seek pleasure

Eudaimonic: try to be the best version of yourself/develop a skill

  • How are ‘hedonism’ and the hedonic approach to assessing SWB different? Doing things that probably are not good for long-term well-being
  • Beyond direct self-reports, how were the ‘very happy people’ identified by Diener & Seligman? Participants asked to recall how many positive vs. negative memories they have had Self-report: do you feel a lot of positive memories?

 

Adaptation or ‘Hedonic Treadmill’

  • Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman (1978)
  • Lotto winners, controls, accident victims o Not large sample (22, 58, 29), but huge impact o Rated past, present, & future happiness

Asked to retrospect o Rated pleasure from everyday activities

Adaptations: getting used to things

Notion that applies to physical sensations – applied to happiness in general?

 

 

  • Study might contradict intuitions (?)

Initially, the victims were less happy – but pleasures enjoyed were about the same Adaptation will occur

  • Yet, results often overstated o Spinal cord injury is not easy!
  • Issues around remembered and predicted happiness
  • People seem to adapt to even major events
  • Newer research with much better data Can be more definitive
  • (see Lucas reading RE stability & change) Another good source:

o Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305-311.

 

Modern View of Adaptation

  • ‘Set points’ are not neutral (even under poor circumstances) Set point: average level of happiness
  • Substantial individual differences in set points (recall strong personality & SWB links)
  • Probably multiple set points o PA, NA, satisfaction with life, stability & trajectory differences

Difference components can move in different directions – consider more than one thing

  1. Happiness can change o Conditions of countries & SWB; major events; efforts

Multiple levels of happiness

Happiness can change – not completely insensitive to condition

  1. Individual differences in adaptation o g., trajectories after marriage o BUT these hard to predict Individual patterns

 

Intentional Happiness Change

  • Lyubomirsky & Layous (2013)
  • Happiness is nice
  • Happiness predict other good things
  • There are relatively easy exercises that improve happiness
  • (These often modeled on characteristics of happy people)

 

Some Exercises

  • Gander, et al.; Table 1: Well-being project handout
  • Three good things (& why; over time)

Once a day/week participant write down 3 good things that happened and why they believe they happened

  • Three funny things (& why…)
  • Signature strengths in a new way

Individual differences that are valued, notion that we are stronger in some ways over others

  • Counting (& doing) kindness
  • Gift of time (with close others)

Essentially asked to spend time with other people – arrange to spend the time New reason/excuse to visit – addition

  • One door closes, another door opens

Reflection – think/write about something bad that happened that lead to a new (and better) opportunity

 

Person-Activity Fit: some activities work better for certain types of people

Proposed ‘key’

Across Activities

  • Dosage: not clear what the appropriate dosage is

Between Activities

  • Present/Future/Past: doing something that focuses on either one
  • Others/Self: focused on

Person Features

  • Efficacy Beliefs: if you believe something can be helpful, it tends to be
  • Baseline Affective State: where are you starting?
  • Social Support: feature of the person, do they have a lot of social support?
  • Demographics: ways in which individuals are different

The Mediators

  • How this works: process/reason these positive interventions are leading to well-being
  • Positive Emotions
  • Positive Thoughts
  • Positive Behaviours
  • Need Satisfaction: self determination theory, makes the assumption that people have 3 fundamental basic needs (psychological needs) and that meeting these needs leads to happiness and well-being – intrinsically motivated to find them
    1. Autonomy: self-directed
    2. Need for relatedness: want to have strong relationships with others – part of strong groups
    3. Competence: good at things, can do things well

 

Happiness Exercises

  • Generally, they tend to work
  • But this glosses over variation that needs further research Work differently for every person
  • Effort & persistence needed for lasting change o , adaptation; scope of exercises Variety is important too
  • Yet unbridled happiness pursuit not without potential problems
  • What have we learned RE well-being projects?

Considered – draw on