happiness

In the growing field of "happiness research" new studies are turning some well-established theories upside-down, particularly the "set-point" theory of happiness. Now researchers think your permanent 'base' level of happiness can change.Psychologists have generally believed that human happiness (or what psychologists call "subjective well-being") is largely independent of our life circumstances. This explains why the wealthy aren't much happier than the middle class, married people aren't much happier than single people, healthy people aren't much happier than sick people, and so on.It would follow then that changes in life circumstances do not have long-term effects on our happiness. In fact this belief has been the dominant model of subjective well-being: People adapt to major life events, both positive and negative, and our happiness pretty much stays constant through our lives, even if it is occasionally perturbed.This theory predicts that winning the lottery, for example, won't make you happier in the long run. While a divorce or even a major illness will throw your life into upheaval, over the long-run your happiness level will eventually return to where it was at before. It is called the "set-point" theory and employs a term borrowed from the set-point theory of body-weight which states that weight-loss will almost always be temporary.But new research, and reexamination of old research, is challenging some of the these claims. Studies are showing that happiness levels in fact do change; adaptation is not inevitable and life events do matter. The most important variables are that not all life changes are the same and that there are differences in the way that individuals adapt to life changes.With regard to different types of life events, the study's authors noted the different adaptations to marriage on one hand to losing a spouse on the other. "On average, most people adapt quickly to marriage, for example - within just a couple of years, the peak in subjective well-being experienced around the time of getting married returns to its previous levels. People mostly adapt to the sorrows of losing a spouse too, but this takes longer - about 7 years. People who get divorced and people who become unemployed, however, do not, on average, return to the level of happiness they were at previously. The same can be said about physical debilitation. Numerous recent studies have demonstrated that major illnesses and injury result in significant, lasting decreases in subjective-well being.What does all of this theory mean in practice? A lot.If you meet an unhappy single, fall in love, get married and are thrilled to see your new spouse walking around with a smile on their face, be forewarned, withing 3 years of adapting to the new situation they may very likely adapt and return to their previous level. But at the same time it's important to know what is making them relatively unhappy when you met them. It is possible that they were in fact adapting to something bad that happened to them and that their baseline happiness is in fact much higher and that is the level to which they will return. (Note: don't expect to learn this in one speed-dating session.). It's also important to understand the rate of adaption for one individual may be completely different for another.