In my initial post on Hacking the Hedonic Treadmill I discussed the concept of Adaptation Level Theory and how happiness for all effective purposes is a relative, not an absolute measure of well-being and satisfaction.

Well, as it turns out, how we measure our own happiness is also a matter of relative scale.

Download: Deconstructing the Hedonic Treadmill, by Nicolas Luis Bottan and Ricardo Pérez Trugliag from the Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andrés and Harvard University.

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If you’re like me, you spend most waking hours pursuing things like (money, relationships, material possessions, ice cream) that you feel will maximize your personal happiness. You may view happiness as a step chart, each new conquest providing a new overall level of happiness.

As it turns out that there is a body of research based around this principal called “Adaptation Level Theory“. Adapted by Michael Eysenck, a British psychology researcher during the late nineties, the hedonic treadmill theory compares the pursuit of happiness to a person on a treadmill, who has to keep working just to stay in the same place.

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