There is evidence that if an individual’s basic needs are met, after a certain point, increases in income do not lead to much greater happiness. The idea of the hedonic treadmill can apply to discrete pleasures-like getting accustomed to better beer-or it can apply to an overall lifestyle. But once the body adapts to that exercise, heavier and heavier weights will be needed to keep getting stronger. When you first start lifting weights, for example, a relatively light weight might be all it takes to start putting on muscle. (Conversely, when we get used to having less, it takes less to please us.) This is the known as the “hedonic treadmill.” It’s analogous to the well-known tendency to adapt to physical stress. When we get used to having more, it takes more to please us. A great pleasure, repeated often enough, becomes routine, and it takes an even greater treat to give us the same enjoyment. It now takes an even greater taste sensation to yield the same thrill our beer drinker experienced the first few times she tried the craft beer. The experience is no longer as special as it was at first. But check in after a few months when she has been drinking the craft beer on a regular basis. The craft beer is so much more flavorful than what she has been used to drinking, and the experience is highly enjoyable. A few more sips and she comes to appreciate the beer’s complexity and the exquisite balance between bitterness and sweetness. At first she notices the intensity of the flavor. Imagine a person who, after years of drinking bland, watery beer from a mass-market brewery, finally tastes a really good craft beer. But the human tendency to adapt or “get accustomed” to situations is more profound than even Dostoyevsky may have realized.

When Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, in The House of the Dead, that “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” he was talking about the cruelties and deprivations of life in Siberian prison camp.

The hedonic treadmill