Similarly, people may come to want either less or more as they adjust to a situation’s constraints and opportunities. Their experiences of discrepancy from future goal attainment (Judgment J3B) can thus become modified, with different goals becoming important in these comparisons. Linked to that, new motivational emphases can develop, with associated changes in personal salience (J4) as different aspects of life come to take on different importance. Judgments of one’s self-efficacy (J5) are also likely to increase across time in a stable situation, as one learns to cope with what were originally novel demands.
Adaptation to an environmental feature or set of features can thus involve the other judgment processes considered here. In addition, adaptation can give rise to changes in the environmental features considered in previous chapters. For example, environmental clarity (feature 5) can increase across time, and contact with others (6) may be variety as mutual learning occurs between an individual and people in his or her setting. Adjustment to a situation may also involve changes in externally generated goals (3), as different activities are undertaken or a person’s ability to attain particular goals becomes enhanced or reduced.
It may thus be that the happiness or unhappiness of employees whose job features have improved or deteriorated subsequently returns toward an equilibrium level, perhaps being held under personal homeostatic control (Cummins, 200a). The “dynamic equilibrium model” of Headey and Wearing (1989, 1992) proposed that each person has a “normal” level of well-being and of experienced life events. “Human beings construct their world to arrive at a psychologically consistent set of perceptions-an equilibrium state-which supports or bolsters a feeling of well-being” (1992, p.7). Subjective well-being was predicted to remain stable except in response to novel events outside the “normal” range. However, well-being changes were expected to be temporary, as adaptation occurred. Headey and Wearing observed that ‘pattern in a community sample across a 6-year period. The longitudinal “honeymoon-hangover” pattern reported for job changers by Boswell et al. (2005; described earlier) also illustrated a return to people’s setpoint after a temporary shift.