Hedonic adaptation: why endless content reduces savoring

Hedonic adaptation is the empirical finding that subjective well-being returns to a baseline regardless of changes in circumstances.

The classic demonstration is Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman's 1978 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper comparing lottery winners and accident victims. Both groups, after a period of adjustment, reported well-being levels remarkably close to baseline and to each other.

Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman: "Lottery winners were not happier than controls, and they took less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Paraplegics also did not appear nearly as unhappy as might have been expected." — 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.

The implication for content abundance follows directly. A single great film, once a rare event, is now one of many available titles in a given week. The objective quality has not changed; the relative experience has, because the reference point has shifted.

Research in positive psychology has converged on anticipation, attention, and afterthought as the components of savoring most disrupted by abundance (see Bryant & Veroff, 2007, Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience, Lawrence Erlbaum). All three components require some form of scarcity — temporal, spatial, or attentional — to operate.

The most reliable intervention is structural: introduce artificial scarcity. Pick fewer titles per week. Wait between sessions. Both have experimental support in the savoring literature for restoring per-experience satisfaction.

References

• Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., 36(8), 917–927.
• Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Related: Abundance and motivation · Binge mental health · Loneliness paradox