research may throw some light on man’s elusive quest for
happiness. Michigan State University psychologists have found
that major changes in life circumstances like marriage, divorce,
or debilitating illness, can indeed have long-term impact on
happiness levels, contrary to the earlier theory that ‘happiness’
is a constant and impervious to long-term change. In the April
issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science,
Richard Lucas, associate professor of psychology, reviews some
recent studies that fly in the face of the popular belief that
general happiness levels were constant and impervious to
long-term change. In fact, some downturns do stay down for some
people, said Lucas, who also is affiliated with the German
Institute for Economic Research.
"Even though happiness is
heritable and relatively stable, it can change. Happiness levels
do change, adaptation is not inevitable and life events do
matter," he added. The party line for most psychologists
has been that happiness—or what psychologists call subjective
well-being— is largely independent of life circumstances.
The dominant model: People adapt to major life events, both
positive and negative, and happiness pretty much stays constant
through life, even if it is occasionally disrupted. Under this
theory, winning the lottery won’t make you happier in the long
run and while a divorce or even a major illness will throw
your life into upheaval for a while, your happiness level will
eventually return to where it was at before—that is, its set
point. Lucas and his colleagues, however, looked at two large
national prospective panel studies, one in Germany and the other
in Great Britain. These studies, spanning some 24 years in
Germany and 15 years in Great Britain, captured levels of life
satisfaction both prior to and after major life events like
marriage, divorce, unemployment and illness or disability. Lucas
found that not all things in life affect people equally. On an
average, most people adapt quickly to marriage, for example,
within a couple of years. People mostly adapt to the sorrows of
losing a spouse too, but this takes longer—about seven
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. However, Lucas stresses that his findings
do not undercut the importance of adaptation processes. It also
poses more interesting questions.
"We see some hints in
these studies, like perhaps people who are positive emotionally
tend to bounce back more, or that good social relationships play
a role. We need to understand the variability in the way people
react," he said. — ANI
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