Article1978

Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?

Philip Brickman · Dan Coates · Ronnie Janoff‐Bulman

2,229 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management

Abstract

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness.

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References

1975The illusion of control.1976Social Indicators of Well-Being 1976Stressful Life Events: Their Nature and Effects.1971Hedonic relativism and planning the good society 1977Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot.1968The Relativism of Absolute Judgments

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