The hedonic treadmill

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The hedonic treadmill

 

Doomed to dissatisfaction with the stuff we have, we want more, it

seems, always more. that's life in the consumer society. after this

latest holiday bout of binge buying, have we had enough?

 

MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette

Published: Tuesday, January 03, 2006

It's been just hours since the last Christmas present was unwrapped,

and already hundreds of Boxing Day shoppers are lined up in the

driving sleet outside the Best Buy store at Fairview Pointe Claire

shopping centre.

 

Katarina and Jean-Francois Hebert are tempted by a $3,000 plasma TV,

even though their current set works perfectly well.

 

" It's slim. It can hang on the wall, " muses Katarina, 25.

 

However, if Timothy Wilson is right, the Heberts could be in for a

disappointment.

 

Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, is at

the forefront of a group of academics who say North Americans are

stuck on what they call a hedonic treadmill.

 

Derived from the Greek word for pleasure, the term describes how

consumers scurry after stuff we think will make us happy, only to

find once we get it, the thrill quickly wears off.

 

As we face the annual holiday aftermath of maxed-out credit cards and

too-tight waistbands, perhaps it's time to heed the wake-up call from

happiness experts like Wilson.

 

" We think, 'Gee, if I just buy this new car, I'll be really happy,' "

Wilson says. " But we find we're not as happy as we thought we'd be. "

 

Before we know it, he says, we're back on that treadmill, chasing

some other shiny new toy, whether it's the plasma TV, a new kitchen

or designer jeans.

 

What worries Ashesh Mukherjee, a professor of marketing at McGill

University, is that most of us don't realize how hooked on spending

we've become.

 

" If the treadmill has speeded up gradually, you don't notice it, "

Mukherjee says. " People have become conditioned to move up. That's

why you see this rush to go out and buy the latest electronic gizmo. "

 

The result, he says, is that North Americans are socking away less

money than ever.

 

" People are saving less and less, " Mukherjee says. " The savings rate

in Canada is less than one per cent. It was six per cent in 1994. "

 

Americans are even worse off, Mukherjee adds. " In the U.S., people

are spending more than they earn. "

 

So what keeps us on the treadmill?

 

According to Wilson, it's the oversized expectations we place on the

things we desire.

 

For example, we think life will be perfect once we get that new

television.

 

Conversely, we assume life will be unbearable if we get cancer.

 

But the truth is that neither event will necessarily change our lives

as profoundly as we think, says Wilson, who with Harvard psychologist

Daniel Gilbert has authored dozens of studies on affective

forecasting - the predictions we make about how we will react

emotionally to future events.

 

Wilson and his peers have coined a term - the impact bias - to

describe our tendency to overestimate how both positive and negative

events will affect us.

 

Their research confirms the TV won't make us happy for long.

 

Why?

 

" The key is that humans are consummate sense-makers of our world, "

Wilson says. " The easier something is to understand, then the quicker

we will adapt to it. "

 

As soon as we get used to the TV, our pleasure in it wanes.

 

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