The positive psychology movement, which studies happiness, is not really all that old, but it’s old enough for some of its findings to have become so widely accepted that you run into them everywhere. One of these is the set point, a level of happiness that varies from person to person (perhaps due to genetic causes) and tends to persist throughout a person’s lifetime. The idea is that life events may nudge you away from your set point in one direction or the other, but sooner or later you’ll adapt to even major changes in your circumstances. This press release from EurekAlert describes some recent work that found that it’s not that clearcut. A review of the data from two large studies showed that some events are more easily adjusted to than others, and there’s also a good deal of individual variation. We do still adapt, but the phenomenon is more nuanced than a simple individual set point that people invariably return to.
The happiness set point reconsidered
