Despite this accumulating understanding, there are persistent problems in
researching happiness and subjective quality of life, which are multiplied
when our attention turns to developing countries. First, there is the
pervasive propensity of people to adapt to changes in their life
circumstances: the related phenomena of ‘adaptive preferences’, ‘hedonic
adaptation’, ‘the hedonic treadmill’, or ‘response shift’ (Cummins and Nistico
2002; Frederic and Loewenstein 1999; Parducci 1995; Schwartz and
Sprangers 1999). This involves the unconscious process of adjusting
expectations to reality, through either a recalibration of one’s internal
standards or a reprioritisation of one’s values. This ability to adapt would
appear to be a ubiquitous feature of the human condition and applies to
individual losses (physical disablement) and gains (winning the lottery)
(Brickman et al 1978), and to collective misfortunes (natural disasters) and
improvements (economic growth and prosperity). All confound any simple
reliance on subjective quality of life scores when making intra-personal
comparisons or comparisons over time