PSYC 3302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Spinal Cord Injury, Affective Forecasting, Impact Bias
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Adaptation or hedonic treadmill brickman et al. , 1978. Lotto winners, controls, accident victims: not large sample (22, 58, 29), but huge impact, rated past, present, & future happiness, rated pleasure from every day activities, study might contradict intuitions (?, yet, results often overstated. Spinal cord injury is not easy: issues around remembered and predicted happiness, people seem to adapt to even major events, newer research with much better data. Individual differences in adaptation: e. g. , trajectories after marriage, but these are hard to predict. Predicted emotions have spawned much research in recent years. There are relatively easy exercises that improve happiness (these often modeled on characteristics of happy people) Gander, et al. (2013); table 1: reference in well-being project handout. The positive-activity model, which aims to explain how and why performing positive activities makes people happier. Positive activities increase positive emotions, positive thoughts, positive behaviors, and need satisfaction, all of which turn enhance well-being.