“Happiness Trap” – Can we be happy as long as we are happy?

Half a year ago, "good luck" came to me: I experienced a promotion and a pay raise, got a good-sounding job title, and also had the independent office I had longed for.

You must think I will be very happy when dreams come true, right?

I regret to tell you that this is not the case: when I calculated the increased figures on my salary card, the happiness had just passed, and the excitement and novelty disappeared in the second week when I sat in my independent office, and I didn't even pay special attention to my new position updated on the copyright page of the magazine. I thought these things that I had dreamed of before would bring me strong happiness and joy. But this is not the case. Happiness was fleeting the moment the dream came true.

Have you ever had a similar experience to mine? When you finally "jump to" a company you've always dreamed of working for, the joy doesn't seem to last long; after you finally go to a long-awaited online celebrity attraction and complete a series of actions such as checking in and posting on your Moments, you don't seem to be that happy anymore, and you may not even want to go back for a second visit.

Why is pleasure so fleeting?

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright believes that this is the "design" of natural selection. Humans do certain things under the "design" of natural selection in order to pass on genes to the next generation. In order to achieve the goal of "passing on genes to the next generation", nature designed the mechanism of "pleasure is easy to fade". Happiness is fleeting, which brings dissatisfaction to us after achieving our goals, which drives us to pursue more pleasure. Natural selection does not want us to be happy, but wants us to be "prolific", prolific from its perspective, a very narrow prolific. The way to make us prolific is to make our expectations of pleasure very strong, but not for long.

Scientists study this logic by observing the secretion of dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and the anticipation of pleasure) at a biochemical level. In a groundbreaking study, they used monkeys as experimental subjects and dripped sweet juice on the monkeys' tongues while monitoring the monkeys' dopamine-producing neurons. Just as expected, dopamine was secreted immediately after the juice dripped on the tongue. The monkeys were then trained to understand that they would get the juice when the light came on. As the experiment progressed, the monkeys secreted more and more dopamine when the light came on, while they secreted less and less dopamine when the juice actually touched their tongues.

We can't be sure of the monkeys' feelings, but it seems that as time goes on, the pleasure brought by the anticipation of sweetness becomes more and more intense, while the pleasure actually experienced from the sweetness becomes less and less.

From this experiment, we can infer that if you experience a new pleasure, such as checking in at a popular tourist spot, you will secrete a lot of dopamine. But then, you have already been to this attraction, and the peak of dopamine secretion will appear before your next visit, and the amount of dopamine secreted the second time you go to this attraction is much less than the amount secreted the first time you go.

Happiness is inherently very ephemeral, and positive emotions don’t last very long, so people are constantly looking for new ways to feel good. However, the things that make us happy (like a pay raise, a vacation, a new car, celebrating a holiday) only bring us temporary happiness. To make matters worse, humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy, a concept known as affective forecasting. We think winning the lottery will make us happy, but in fact, most people who win the lottery tend to go back to their previous state, regardless of whether they were happy before. It’s like a mirage on the horizon, and we’re constantly chasing happiness but never getting it.

In 1971, Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell proposed the theory of the hedonic treadmill, also known as the hedonic adaptation theory. This theory refers to the tendency of people to eventually return to their initial level of happiness despite the ups and downs of life. For example, your dream is to own a big house, work hard, make a lot of money, and then move into your "dream house." Achieving this dream will make you satisfied for a while, but sooner or later you will start wanting a bigger house. In effect, you are stuck in a vicious cycle of desire.

The cycle is shown in the figure. The cycle from top to bottom is: desire - effort - acquisition - enjoyment - adaptation - more desire. According to the "hedonic treadmill" theory, what you expect is always higher than what you have. Human desire is to want more and better. Therefore, no matter what you have, you are destined to return to that initial level of happiness. Happiness is fleeting, which will trap us in a cycle of dissatisfaction.

You may have realized that this is a treadmill, designed to keep you running and running, and you usually don't reach any destination. Yet you keep running.

Is there a way to “escape the treadmill”?

In fact, a large number of studies have found that we can feel happy without any external stimulation. In the past 30 years, mindfulness training based on Eastern meditation has gradually developed in the West. Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, regards mindfulness as one of the three major factors to enhance physical and mental pleasure. Mindfulness training to enhance happiness has become a topic of increasing concern to researchers.

For example, Davidson et al. found that mindfulness training significantly enhanced the alpha wave activity in the left prefrontal cortex of individuals, and this brain region is related to positive emotions, which may be one of the brain neural mechanisms by which mindfulness enhances positive emotions. Holzel et al. found that after 8 weeks of mindfulness training, the gray matter density of the right basolateral amygdala of the subjects decreased, and the perceived stress decreased, which may be a way for mindfulness to relieve negative emotions.

According to Barbara Fredrickson, we can use mindfulness meditation to escape the "hedonic treadmill". Regular meditation practice can improve your focus, life satisfaction, and positive emotions such as happiness. You just need to sit down and spend a few minutes in the present moment. Listen to the breeze blowing through your ears, feel the warmth of the air on your skin, feel the weight of our body on the earth, and take a few deep breaths. These simple things are enough to make us feel happy.

Lifelong happiness lies in a shift in mindset, and mindfulness meditation is a very effective tool.

Are you now in home quarantine looking forward to the day when you can regain your "freedom" to go to the amusement park, go shopping in the mall, and eat at the popular restaurant you have collected on Dianping for a long time? In fact, the realization of these expectations may only bring you fleeting happiness. And happiness is actually right now. If you really succeed in meditation, you may be able to develop a new state of mind, less pursuing success than before, no longer tirelessly pursuing distant material goals, but more focusing on the present.

References:

Edward Berkeley, Melissa Berkeley, Psychology of Motivation, Posts and Telecommunications Press

Robert Wright, Insight: From Science to Philosophy, Uncovering the Truth of Human Cognition, Beijing United Publishing House

Emel Bayramoglu: What is the "hedonic treadmill"? How does it pull us down into the abyss of desire?

https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_12562092

Davidson RJ, Kabat-Zinn J, Schumacher J, et al. Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation [J]. Psychosomat Med, 2003, 65(4): 564-570.

Holzel BK, Carmody J, Evans KC, et al. Stress reduction correlates with structural changes in the amygdala［J］. Soc Cognit Affect Neurosci, 2010, 5(1): 11-17.

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