Adaptation is an incredibly general process that operates at deep physiological, psychological, and environmental levels, and it affects us in many aspects of our lives. Because of its generality and pervasiveness, there is also a lot that we don’t yet understand about it.
For example, it is unclear whether we experience complete or just partial hedonic adaptation as we get used to new life circumstances. It is also unclear how hedonic adaptation works its magic on us or whether there are many paths to achieving it. Nevertheless, the following personal anecdotes might shed some light on this important topic. (And stay tuned, because more research on hedonic adaptation is on its way.)
The lesson here is to slow down pleasure. A new couch may please you for a couple of months, but don’t buy your new television until after the thrill of the couch has worn off. The opposite holds if you are struggling with economic cut-backs.
When reducing consumption, you should move to a smaller apartment, give up cable television, and cut back on expensive coffee all at once-sure, the initial pain will be larger, but the total amount of agony over time will be lower.
IN A SIMILAR way, we can harness adaptation to maximize our overall satisfaction in life by shifting our investments away from products and services that give us a constant stream of experiences and toward ones that are more temporary and fleeting. For example, stereo equipment and furniture generally provide a constant experience, so it’s very easy to adapt to them. On the other hand, transient experiences (a four-day getaway, a scuba diving adventure, or a concert) are fleeting, so you can’t adapt to them as readily.
The long-term effect of the sofa on your happiness is probably going to be much lower than you expect, while the long-term enjoyment of and memories from scuba diving will probably last much longer than you predict.
ANOTHER LESSON IN adaptation has to do with the situations of the people around us. When other people have things that we don’t, the comparison can be very apparent and, as a consequence, we can be slower to adapt.
Let’s say you want a particular laptop but decide that it’s too expensive. If you settle for a cheaper one, you’ll most likely get used to it over time. That is, unless the person in the cubicle next to you has the laptop that you originally wanted. In the latter case, the daily comparison between your laptop and your neighbor’s will slow down your adaptation and make you less happy.
This principle means that when we consider the process of adaptation, we should think about the various factors in our environment and how they may influence our ability to adapt. The sad news is that our happiness does depend to some degree on our ability to keep up with the Joneses. The good news is that since we have some control over what environment we put ourselves into–as long as we pick Joneses to whom we don’t feel bad in comparison, we can be much happier.
We all have some wonderful features and some undesirable flaws. We usually learn to live with them from a young age and end up being generally pleased with our place in society and in the social hierarchy.
The fundamental problem is that online dating sites treat their users as searchable goods, as though they were digital cameras that can be fully described by a few attributes such As megapixels, lens aperture, and memory size. But in reality, if prospective romantic partners could possibly be considered as “products,” they would be closer to what economists call “experience goods.”
Like dining experiences, perfumes, and art, people can’t be anatomized easily and effectively in the way that these dating Websites imply.
“the identifiable victim effect”, once we have a face, a picture, and details about a person, we feel for them, and our actions–and money–follow. However, when the information is not individualized, we simply don’t feel as much empathy and, as a consequence, fail to act.
Closeness doesn’t just refer to physical nearness, however; it also refers to a feeling of kinship–you are close to your relatives, your social group, and to people with whom you share similarities. Naturally (and thankfully), most of the tragedies in the world are not close to us in terms of physical or psychological proximity.
We don’t personally know the vast majority of the people who are suffering, and therefore it is hard for us to feel as much empathy for their pain as we might for a relative, friend, or neighbor in trouble.
The effect of closeness is so powerful that we are much more likely to give money to help a neighbor who has lost his high-paying job than to a much needier homeless person who lives one town over. And we will be even less likely to give money to help someone whose home has been lost to an earthquake three thousand miles away.
Source – The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7815744-the-upside-of-irrationality
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