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Word of the Day > Word of the Day - Hedonic Treadmill

From Wikipedia:

Humans rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted. The more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to boost our level of happiness. It supposes that the brain of a species that has dominated others would evolve to strive for continual betterment.

Brickman and Campbell (1971) coined the term "Hedonic Treadmill" in an chapter in which they described the consequences of adaptation to good and bad events (Brickman, P., &Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. In M. H. Apley (Ed.), Adaptation level theory: A symposium (pp. 287-302). New York: Adademic Press). The theory has consequences for understanding happiness as both an individual and a societal goal.

The concept was modified by Michael Eysenck, a British psychology researcher during the late nineties, to refer to the hedonic treadmill theory which compares the pursuit of happiness to a person on a treadmill, who has to keep working just to stay in the same place.

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