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You wanted the new phone for months. For about a week it felt like magic. Now it’s just your phone.
Same with the raise. The bigger flat. The car with the seats that warm up. Each one felt like it would change everything, and each one quietly became normal. Then you started wanting the next thing.
There’s a name for this. It’s called the hedonic treadmill, and once you see it, you’ll spot it everywhere. Including in places you’d rather not.
What Is the Hedonic Treadmill?
The hedonic treadmill is the way people get used to good things (and bad things) and drift back to about the same level of happiness they had before.
“Hedonic” just means “to do with pleasure.” The treadmill is the picture: you keep walking, the belt keeps moving, and you stay in the same spot.
Two psychologists, Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell, gave it that name in 1971. Their essay had a telling title: “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society.” They weren’t only thinking about shopping. They were asking a bigger question. If people get used to every improvement, can making life better ever make people happier for long?
Psychologists today usually call it hedonic adaptation. Same idea. Your mind treats whatever you have now as the new normal, and measures everything from there.
The Lottery Study Everyone Quotes (and the Part They Skip)
The most famous test of the hedonic treadmill came in 1978. Brickman worked with Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman. They talked to 22 people who had won big in a state lottery. They also talked to neighbours who hadn’t won, and to people who had been paralysed in accidents.
The headline finding is the one you may have heard. The lottery winners were not happier than their neighbours. Winning felt huge at the time. It didn’t last.
But the study is often retold as “paralysed people were just as happy as lottery winners.” That’s not what it found. The accident victims, who were still in rehab, were less happy than the neighbours. The researchers did not claim they had bounced all the way back.
Here’s the part almost nobody mentions. It’s the most useful bit of the whole study.
The researchers asked everyone how much they enjoyed seven ordinary things. Talking with a friend. Watching TV. Eating breakfast. Hearing a funny joke. Getting a compliment. Reading a magazine. Buying clothes.
The lottery winners enjoyed those everyday things less than their neighbours did.
The researchers put it plainly. Winning a fortune can make new pleasures available, but it may also make old pleasures seem less enjoyable. The big win didn’t just fade. It made breakfast taste a little flatter.
That’s the real sting of the hedonic treadmill. It doesn’t only stop new joys from lasting. It can quietly steal from the small ones you already had.
Why Your Brain Does This
The 1978 paper named two forces behind it.
- Contrast. A big high becomes the new ruler. Next to it, normal days look small.
- Habituation. Anything you have every day slowly stops registering. The thrill gets folded into the background.
This isn’t a flaw in you. It’s how minds are built. The same process that makes a new car feel ordinary also helps people live through hard seasons. If we never got used to anything, a loss would hurt at full strength forever.
The trouble is what happens when you point this process at “more.” Every upgrade raises the bar. You work hard to get somewhere. You arrive. The ground moves. You’re still walking.
You can see it in whole industries, too. The music business once gave gold records to mark the top. Then gold wasn’t enough, so the platinum record was born, and later even diamond needed a bigger version. The treadmill works the same way at scale.
It also feeds comparison. When your own life has gone flat, other people’s highlights look brighter. If that’s where you are, this piece on why we get jealous of other people’s lives goes deeper.
The Hedonic Treadmill Isn’t a Life Sentence
For years, many people read the research as bad news. Happiness has a “set point.” Nothing you do changes it. Why try?
In 2006, psychologists Ed Diener, Richard Lucas and Christie Napa Scollon pushed back in a paper called “Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill.” Looking at studies that followed people over many years, they suggested several fixes to the old idea. Among them:
- Most people’s baseline is not neutral. On average, people sit a bit above the middle.
- People have different starting points, partly shaped by temperament.
- People adapt at different speeds, and some don’t fully adapt to certain events.
- Most importantly, the set point can move.
In other words: you are on a treadmill, but you are not bolted to it.
How to Get Off the Hedonic Treadmill
So what actually slows it down? In 2012, researchers Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky tested a model of exactly this. They described two ways a good change loses its glow. First, the good feelings it brings slowly fade. Second, you start wanting more.
They found two things that slow that fade down: keeping on appreciating the good thing, and keeping some variety in how you experience it. Lyubomirsky has described appreciation as the opposite of adaptation.
None of this needs money, a therapist, or spare hours. Here’s what it can look like:
- Notice one ordinary thing a day, on purpose. The first sip of something warm. A friend’s voice. Name it in your head. Remember: those are exactly the pleasures the treadmill steals first.
- Look at what you already have as if it were new. Picture the day you first got it, or the time you went without it. That small shift brings back some of the contrast that habit wore away.
- Change the small details. Walk a different street. Eat your usual meal somewhere new. Variety keeps a good thing from fading into the background.
- Catch the “next thing” thought. When your mind jumps to what you’ll want after this, pause. You don’t have to fight the wanting. Just see it for what it is.
- Say thank you out loud. To a person, for something specific. Appreciation that’s spoken tends to stick better than appreciation that’s only felt.
Notice what’s missing from that list. None of it is about getting more. All of it is about learning to hold what’s already there.
The Old Problem Under the New Word
“Hedonic treadmill” is a 1971 phrase. The feeling is much older.
One of the oldest books of wisdom tells of a king who had everything and tried everything: gardens, wealth, music, building projects, every pleasure he could reach. His verdict is almost clinical. Each thing faded. The eye never got its fill of seeing. It reads like a lab report on hedonic adaptation, written thousands of years before anyone ran a study.
And the answer those old writers kept circling back to wasn’t “try harder” or “want less.” It was gratitude with somewhere to go. Receiving life as a gift from God, not a wage you earned. The research says appreciation is the brake. The ancient view adds something quietly powerful: appreciation works best when it has someone to be aimed at. A gift keeps its shine when you remember there’s a giver.
Contentment, in that old view, isn’t the reward for finally arriving. It’s something you learn, a little at a time, right where you are.
Where That Leaves You
You’ll probably still want the next thing sometimes. That’s fine. You’re human, and your brain is doing what brains do.
But tomorrow morning, there will be breakfast. There may be a friend who texts, or a joke that lands. These are the small things the lottery winners lost the taste for. You don’t have to lose them.
The belt will keep moving. You can still stop walking long enough to notice where you’re standing. It might be a better place than you thought.
Questions People Ask About the Hedonic Treadmill
What is the hedonic treadmill in simple words?
The hedonic treadmill is the tendency of people to get used to good and bad changes in life and drift back toward roughly the same level of happiness they had before. A new job, home or purchase feels exciting at first, then becomes normal, and the person starts wanting something new. Psychologists also call this hedonic adaptation.
Who came up with the term hedonic treadmill?
The term “hedonic treadmill” was coined by psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell in a 1971 essay titled “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society.” They argued that because people adapt to improvements in their circumstances, better conditions may not produce lasting gains in happiness.
Did the lottery winner study prove money doesn’t make you happy?
The 1978 study by Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman found that 22 major lottery winners were not happier than their neighbours, and that the winners enjoyed everyday pleasures such as eating breakfast, hearing a joke or getting a compliment less than their neighbours did. It was a small study, and it showed that a sudden windfall did not raise happiness as much as expected. It did not prove that money never matters to wellbeing.
Can you actually get off the hedonic treadmill?
Research suggests the hedonic treadmill can be slowed. A 2006 review by Diener, Lucas and Scollon concluded that happiness set points can change and that people adapt at different speeds. A 2012 study by Sheldon and Lyubomirsky found that continuing to appreciate a positive change, and keeping variety in how it is experienced, helps its benefits last longer.
What is the opposite of hedonic adaptation?
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has described appreciation as the opposite of hedonic adaptation. Adaptation makes good things fade into the background, while deliberately noticing and being grateful for them keeps them in view. Simple habits, like naming one ordinary pleasure each day or thanking someone for something specific, put appreciation into practice.
Let’s Talk
What’s one thing you were sure would make you happy for good, that turned out to become “just normal”? Did anything bring the shine back? Tell us in the comments below.
Share This
Got the thing. Loved it for a week. Now it’s just a thing. Turns out that has a name: the hedonic treadmill. The fix isn’t more. It’s noticing. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/health-and-wellness/what-is-the-hedonic-treadmill/
The lottery study everyone quotes has a twist nobody mentions: the winners started enjoying breakfast, jokes and compliments LESS than their neighbours. The big win made the small joys flatter. Worth a read if you’re always chasing the next thing: https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/health-and-wellness/what-is-the-hedonic-treadmill/
Reading about the hedonic treadmill today and it explains so much about why nothing new stays new. The research-backed brake is simple: keep appreciating what you already have. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/health-and-wellness/what-is-the-hedonic-treadmill/
