Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society

What This Research Found

The hedonic treadmill defined. Brickman and Campbell introduced the concept of “hedonic relativism” (later called the “hedonic treadmill”) to describe how people adapt to changes in their circumstances, eventually returning to a relatively stable baseline level of happiness. Positive events—winning the lottery, getting promoted, buying a dream house—produce temporary happiness that fades as the person adapts. Negative events—accidents, losses, setbacks—produce temporary unhappiness that also fades. This adaptation is remarkably robust across many domains.

Adaptation-level theory applied to happiness. The paper drew on Harry Helson’s adaptation-level theory, which explained how perception is relative to adaptation levels established by prior experience. Brickman and Campbell extended this to hedonic experience: how happy we feel is relative to what we’ve adapted to. Yesterday’s luxury becomes today’s baseline; what once produced joy now produces nothing. The target for satisfaction keeps moving because our reference point moves with achievement.

Implications for chronic dissatisfaction. If people adapt to improvements, then pursuing external changes as sources of lasting happiness is a futile strategy—a treadmill where we run but never arrive. This has profound implications for understanding chronic dissatisfaction: some people remain perpetually unhappy not because their circumstances are bad but because they’re pursuing satisfaction through channels that undergo adaptation. No achievement is high enough to outrun adaptation.

The relevance to narcissism. While Brickman and Campbell wrote about general human psychology, their framework proves particularly relevant to narcissistic psychology. The narcissist pursues external validation—admiration, achievement, conquest—as substitute for missing internal self-worth. But these external sources undergo rapid adaptation, becoming part of baseline expectation rather than lasting satisfaction. The narcissist’s chronic emptiness isn’t a failure of achievement but a structural problem: they’re trying to fill an internal void with external supply that adaptation ensures can never satisfy.

Why This Matters for Survivors

Why your love was never enough. If you poured yourself into a relationship with a narcissist—giving attention, admiration, support, sacrifice—and found it never satisfied them, the hedonic treadmill explains why. Your devotion briefly provided narcissistic supply, but quickly became expected, part of baseline. What once produced a “hit” of validation now produced nothing. They needed more—more dramatic admiration, more sacrificial devotion—to achieve the same temporary effect. No amount could ever have been enough because adaptation ensures the target keeps moving.

Their dissatisfaction wasn’t your failure. Many survivors blame themselves for not being able to make the narcissist happy. The hedonic treadmill reveals this was impossible from the start. Their chronic dissatisfaction reflects psychological structure, not your inadequacy. Even if you had been more beautiful, more successful, more devoted—the adaptation mechanism would have reduced it to baseline. The problem was never insufficient supply; it was that external supply cannot substitute for internal self-worth.

Understanding the escalating demands. Survivors often describe how the narcissist’s demands escalated over time—first your attention was enough, then your exclusive attention, then your abandonment of everything else, then even that wasn’t enough. The hedonic treadmill explains this escalation: each level of giving became the new baseline, requiring more to produce any effect. The escalation wasn’t about increasing need but about adaptation eroding each achievement’s impact.

Why they moved on so quickly. If the narcissist replaced you with seemingly no difficulty, finding new supply and appearing happy while you grieved, the hedonic treadmill offers explanation. New supply provides the novelty that briefly produces satisfaction before adaptation sets in. The narcissist isn’t happy in the new relationship—they’re experiencing the temporary high before the treadmill catches up. They didn’t leave because you were inadequate; they left because adaptation required novelty that you, now familiar, couldn’t provide.

Clinical Implications

Frame narcissistic dissatisfaction structurally. When treating narcissistic clients, the hedonic treadmill concept helps frame their chronic dissatisfaction as a structural problem rather than circumstantial one. No achievement will produce lasting satisfaction because of adaptation. This can create opening for exploring internal work—building authentic self-worth rather than pursuing external validation. The recognition that their current strategy is mathematically doomed can motivate different approaches.

Help survivors stop trying to fill the void. For survivors, understanding the hedonic treadmill releases them from the impossible task of satisfying the narcissist. Their efforts weren’t too small; the project was impossible. This understanding can reduce self-blame while redirecting energy toward their own healing rather than analyzing what they could have done differently.

Distinguish adaptive from non-adaptive sources of wellbeing. Research following Brickman and Campbell suggests that some sources of wellbeing resist adaptation: meaningful relationships, activities that produce “flow,” personal growth, contributions to others. Clinicians can help clients pursue these non-adaptive sources rather than circumstances that undergo hedonic adaptation. For survivors rebuilding after narcissistic abuse, this suggests focusing on connection, meaning, and growth rather than circumstantial achievement.

Normalize adaptation to the loss. The hedonic treadmill also works for negative experiences—survivors will adapt to the loss of the relationship, the trauma of the abuse, the disruption of their lives. While this doesn’t minimize their suffering, it offers realistic hope: the acute pain will diminish as adaptation occurs. This can counter hopelessness in early recovery.

Use the concept carefully with narcissistic clients. Presenting the hedonic treadmill to narcissistic clients requires care—it could be experienced as attack on their achievements or nihilistic dismissal of their successes. Frame it as explanation for their experience of dissatisfaction despite achievements, opening exploration of what might actually satisfy rather than criticizing what hasn’t.

Broader Implications

Economics and Policy

The hedonic treadmill challenged assumptions in economics that increasing income and consumption would increase happiness. If people adapt to improvements, then policies focused solely on economic growth may not increase population wellbeing. This has influenced the “economics of happiness” field and policy discussions about measuring societal success through wellbeing rather than GDP alone.

Consumer Culture

Understanding hedonic adaptation helps explain why consumer culture perpetuates dissatisfaction: each purchase briefly satisfies, then becomes baseline, requiring the next purchase to produce any effect. Marketers understand this intuitively, designing products and experiences that offer novelty before adaptation sets in. Critics of consumer culture use the hedonic treadmill to argue that consumption-based happiness is a trap.

Positive Psychology

The hedonic treadmill became a central concept in positive psychology, stimulating research into what actually produces lasting wellbeing if circumstances don’t. This led to focus on intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals, meaning and purpose, flow experiences, gratitude practices, and relationship quality—sources that appear to resist adaptation more than circumstances do.

Comparison to Depression

The hedonic treadmill operates differently in depression, where the adaptation mechanism seems to fail for positive experiences while remaining intact for negative ones. Understanding this distinction has clinical implications for treating depression versus general dissatisfaction.

Evolutionary Psychology

From an evolutionary perspective, hedonic adaptation serves important functions—preventing either endless elation that might reduce survival-oriented vigilance or endless despair that might prevent recovery from setbacks. The treadmill keeps us motivated to pursue goals without becoming either complacent or hopeless. Problems arise when the mechanism is exploited by pursuits that adaptation ensures cannot satisfy.

Narcissism as Extreme Case

The hedonic treadmill operates for everyone, but narcissism represents an extreme case where someone pursues external sources with particular intensity to fill internal deficits that adaptation ensures they cannot fill. Understanding this helps explain why narcissistic psychology produces such pronounced chronic dissatisfaction despite often considerable external success.

Limitations and Considerations

Adaptation isn’t complete. Subsequent research has shown that hedonic adaptation isn’t total—some circumstances produce lasting changes in wellbeing. Severe disability, chronic pain, and unemployment show incomplete adaptation. The original formulation may have overstated how completely people adapt. The “set point” of happiness has some range of movement, not just inevitable return to baseline.

Individual differences matter. People differ in their rates and completeness of adaptation. Some people maintain higher wellbeing after positive changes; some fail to recover from negative ones. The hedonic treadmill describes a tendency, not a universal law. Assessment should consider individual variation rather than assuming uniform adaptation.

Some sources resist adaptation. Research suggests that certain sources of wellbeing—meaningful relationships, flow activities, personal growth, contributions to others—show less adaptation than material circumstances. The hedonic treadmill applies most strongly to hedonic pleasures and material circumstances, less to eudaimonic wellbeing sources.

Cultural factors. Hedonic adaptation may vary across cultures with different values regarding achievement, contentment, and the relationship between circumstances and happiness. The concept was developed primarily in Western contexts and may need adaptation for cultures with different happiness constructs.

How This Research Is Used in the Book

This research is cited in Chapter 17: The Hollowed Self to explain why narcissists’ achievements never satisfy:

“Psychologists describe the hedonic treadmill: people adapt to positive life changes, returning to baseline happiness. The lottery winner’s joy fades; the promotion’s satisfaction wanes. For narcissists, this adaptation occurs more rapidly and more completely, because external achievements never address internal deficit.”

The citation supports the book’s exploration of narcissistic emptiness—why chronic dissatisfaction persists despite often considerable external success, and why supply-seeking behavior escalates without producing lasting satisfaction.

Historical Context

Brickman and Campbell’s 1971 paper introduced a framework that would prove foundational to hedonic psychology, though its full impact emerged later. Brickman’s 1978 study with Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman provided dramatic empirical support: lottery winners were not significantly happier than controls a year after winning, while paralyzed accident victims were not as unhappy as expected.

These findings challenged both common assumptions and economic theories that assumed circumstances directly determined happiness. The research stimulated decades of investigation into what actually produces lasting wellbeing, contributing to the emergence of positive psychology as a field.

Philip Brickman died by suicide in 1982 at age 38, leaving a legacy of influential research that continues to shape understanding of happiness, adaptation, and the pursuit of satisfaction. Donald Campbell continued productive work until his death in 1996, contributing foundational methodology alongside his theoretical work.

The concept they introduced—that we adapt to circumstances, running on a hedonic treadmill that never arrives at lasting satisfaction—has proven remarkably robust and widely applicable, from economic policy to consumer culture to clinical understanding of chronic dissatisfaction.

Further Reading

• Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917-927.
• Diener, E., Lucas, R.E., & Scollon, C.N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61(4), 305-314.
• Kahneman, D. (1999). Objective happiness. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want. Penguin.
• Frederick, S., & Loewenstein, G. (1999). Hedonic adaptation. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. Russell Sage Foundation.