Give It Up A Strategy for Combating Hedonic Adaptation

Abstract

The present research provides the first evidence that temporarily giving up something pleasurable may provide an effective route to happiness. Participants were asked to eat a piece of chocolate during two lab sessions, held 1week apart. During the intervening week, we randomly assigned them to abstain from chocolate or to eat as much of it as possible, while a control group received no special instructions related to their chocolate consumption. At the second lab session, participants who had temporarily given up chocolate savored it significantly more and experienced more positive moods after eating it, compared to those in either of the other two conditions. Many cultural and religious practices entail temporarily giving up something pleasurable, and our research suggests that such self-denial may carry ironic benefits for well-being by combating hedonic adaptation.

Full text

Give It Up: A Strategy for Combating
Hedonic Adaptation
Jordi Quoidbach
1,2
and Elizabeth W. Dunn
3
Abstract
The present research provides the first evidence that temporarily giving up something pleasurable may provide an effective route
to happiness. Participants were asked to eat a piece of chocolate during two lab sessions, held 1week apart. During the intervening
week, we randomly assigned them to abstain from chocolate or to eat as much of it as possible, while a control group received no
special instructions related to their chocolate consumption. At the second lab session, participants who had temporarily given up
chocolate savored it significantly more and experienced more positive moods after eating it, compared to those in either of the
other two conditions. Many cultural and religious practices entail temporarily giving up something pleasurable, and our research
suggests that such self-denial may carry ironic benefits for well-being by combating hedonic adaptation.
Keywords
hedonic adaptation, savoring, happiness, positive emotion regulation
In modern Western society, many people enjoy a level of mate-
rial abundance that would have been unimaginable throughout
most of human history. But such material wealth often fails to
provide as much happiness as people expect (Aknin, Norton, &
Dunn, 2009). A recent study of almost half a million Americans
found that people with higher household incomes experienced
more positive moods on a day-to-day basis, but these emotional
benefits tapered off entirely for annual incomes over about
$75,000 (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). Wealth may fail to
result in lasting happiness in part because of hedonic adapta-
tion, whereby we quickly grow accustomed to the pleasurable
things in our lives—from fancy cars to fine dining and travel—
reducing their impact on our long-term well-being (Frederick
& Loewenstein, 1999; Lyubomirsky, 2011; Wilson & Gilbert,
2008). Having unlimited access to such pleasures may make
individuals less likely to savor them, facilitating hedonic
adaptation. Providing indirect evidence for this idea, recent
research found that wealthier individuals are less inclined to
savor the little pleasures of daily life (Quoidbach, Dunn, Pet-
rides, & Mikoloajczak, 2010). In a society of abundance, then,
we propose that restricting access to pleasurable things may
provide a route to increased happiness, combating hedonic
adaptation by fostering individuals’ proclivity to savor.
Indirect support for the idea that scarcity promotes savoring
comes from a study examining college students on the brink of
graduation (Kurtz, 2008). Through a writing exercise, students
at the University of Virginia were led to feel that they either
had very little time left or they had plenty of time left before
graduation; participants in a control group simply wrote about
a typical weekday. Compared to students in the other two
groups, those who felt they had little time left were more
inclined to make the most of this time by taking pictures,
feeling grateful for their university, making plans with friends,
and engaging in other college-related activities. Over the
course of 2 weeks, students in this group exhibited a significant
increase in happiness relative to both control participants and
those led to feel that they had an abundant amount of time left.
While this experiment only manipulated participants’
perceived access to the joys of college life, the findings offer
suggestive evidence for the broader argument that scarcity may
provide a better route to happiness than does abundance.
If this is the case, then temporarily giving up something
enjoyable may counter hedonic adaptation by renewing the
capacity to appreciate it, enhancing happiness. Although no
studies have examined the effects of temporary deprivation
on subsequent savoring and happiness, research on satiation
is consistent with our argument. In particular, recent work
shows that people evaluate an enjoyable ongoing stimulus
more positively when their experience with the stimulus is
interrupted rather than continuous (Galak, Kruger, & Loewen-
stein, 2012; Nelson & Meyvis, 2008; Nelson, Meyvis, & Galak,
2009). For example, participants in one study rated a 3-min
massage more favorably and were willing to pay more to repeat
1
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
2
University of Lie
`ge, Lie
`ge, Belgium
3
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Jordi Quoidbach, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Email: jquoidbach@gmail.com
Social Psychological and
Personality Science
00(0) 1-6
ªThe Author(s) 2013
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it when the massage was interrupted by a 20-s break in the
middle (Nelson & Meyvis, 2008). In another study, participants
evaluated an episode of the sitcom Taxi more positively when
it was broken up by commercials rather than viewed continu-
ously, suggesting that brief interruptions can enhance the
pleasure of a positive experience (Nelson et al., 2009).
Building on this work, we propose that restricting access to
everyday pleasures may promote the tendency to savor them.
Savoring is a form of emotion regulation that entails maintain-
ing and increasing the positive affect (PA) derived from an
enjoyable experience (e.g., Bryant, Chadwick, & Kluewe,
2011; Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Although savoring has been
conceptualized and measured in a variety of ways, the most
comprehensive definition of savoring includes four key compo-
nents (Ne´lis, Quoidbach, Hansenne, & Mikolajczak, 2011;
Quoidbach, Berry, Hansenne, & Mikolajczak, 2010; Tugade
& Fredrickson, 2007): (1) staying present in the moment during
the experience, (2) anticipating or reminiscing about the experi-
ence, (3) telling others about it, and (4) displaying positive
emotions nonverbally. Highlighting the value of such positive
emotion regulation, research shows that savoring is consistently
linked with greater happiness (Bryant, 2003; Quoidbach, Berry,
et al., 2010). In particular, the use of savoring strategies has been
found to both mediate and magnify the impact of daily positive
events on momentary happy mood (Jose, Lim, & Bryant, 2012).
Therefore, to the extent that scarcity promotes savoring,
abundance may undermine happiness. That is, people may
derive a larger mood boost from consuming something if they
have had limited, rather than abundant, access to it in the recent
past. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to eat a
piece of chocolate during two lab sessions, 1 week apart. Dur-
ing the intervening week, we randomly assigned them to
abstain from chocolate or to eat as much of it as possible, while
a control group received no special instructions related to their
chocolate consumption. We predicted that people who gave up
chocolate would be more likely to savor it subsequently,
leading them to experience more positive moods, compared
to participants in either of the other two groups.
Method
Participants
A total of 55 undergraduates at the University of British
Columbia (80%women; M
age
¼19.4, SD ¼1.5) completed
both sessions of this experiment, which took place exactly 1
week apart.
1
When participants signed up, the experiment was
explicitly described as a study on eating chocolate (presumably
enabling people who disliked chocolate or were dieting to
avoid this study).
Procedure
During the first lab visit (Time 1), participants completed
consent forms and an initial questionnaire that included a mea-
sure of dispositional happiness and demographic items. They
were then randomly assigned to one of the three conditions.
In the restricted access (N¼16) condition, participants were
instructed not to eat any chocolate for a week, until they
returned to the lab. In the abundant access condition
(N¼18), the experimenter gave participants approximately 2
pounds of chocolate (one large bar per day) with the instruction
to eat as much as they comfortably could over the course of the
week. In the control condition (N¼21), participants did not
receive any specific instructions related to their chocolate con-
sumption. All participants were then asked to taste a piece of
chocolate before completing measures of savoring and PA.
Exactly 1 week later (Time 2), participants came back to the
lab, tasted the piece of chocolate a second time, and completed
the same measures of savoring and PA used at Time 1, as well
as reporting how many days they had eaten chocolate during
the week between lab sessions.
2
Measures
Dispositional Happiness. To assess whether participants saw
themselves as happy people, we used the well-validated
Subjective Happiness scale (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999),
which includes four 7-point items (a
Time1
¼.89; a
Time2
¼.90).
Positive Affect. In both lab sessions, we measured PA using the
PA scale from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule
(PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) Specifically,
participants rated 10 mood-related adjectives (e.g., enthusias-
tic) on a scale of 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely)
for how well each adjective described their current mood
(a
Time1
¼.88; a
Time2
¼.90). We selected the PANAS as a
mood measure because it has been validated to capture transi-
ent moods (Watson et al., 1988) and has been previously asso-
ciated with dispositional savoring (Quoidbach et al., 2010).
Savoring. Our savoring measure was designed to capture the
four main facets of savoring described in the Introduction.
On scales from 1 (not at all)to7(agreatdeal), participants
reported to what extent they had tried to mindfully pay atten-
tion to the chocolate’s taste and texture while eating (staying
present), (2) were looking forward to eating this chocolate in
the future (positive mental time travel), and (3) were planning
to tell a friend about the chocolate (telling others). In order to
measure the behavioral display component of savoring, the
experimenter (a research assistant who was blind to the study
hypotheses) surreptitiously observed each participant eating
the chocolate and rated how much enjoyment participants
displayed, on a scale from 1 (not at all)to7(agreatdeal). These
4 items were averaged into a total savoring score (a
Time1
¼.47;
a
Time2
¼.69).
3
Results
Manipulation Check
To test whether our manipulation successfully influenced how
often participants ate chocolate during the week between lab
visits, we entered experimental condition into an analysis of
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variance predicting the number of days on which they reported
eating chocolate. There were large between-group differences
on this manipulation check, F(1, 52) ¼107.42, p< .001, Z
p
2
¼
.81, with those in the restricted access condition eating
chocolate on fewer days (M¼.19, SD ¼.40) than those in the
control condition (M¼3.35, SD ¼1.50) and the abundant access
condition, (M¼6.1, SD ¼1.27). Pairwise comparisons using
least significant difference tests showed that each condition
differed significantly from each of the other two, all ps<.001.
Positive Affect
Preliminary analyses revealed that there were no between-group
differences in participants’ Time 1 PA, F(2, 52) ¼.05, p¼.95,
or dispositional happiness, F(2, 52) ¼1.23, p¼.30. Thus,
because there are substantial individual differences in typical
happiness levels (e.g., Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade,
2005), we entered Time 1 PA and dispositional happiness as
control variables in an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) pre-
dicting Time 2 PA from experimental condition. As expected,
there were significant between-group differences in Time 2
PA after eating the chocolate, F(2,50) ¼3.21, p¼.05, Z
p
2
¼
.11. Pairwise comparisons showed that participants in the
restricted access group reported significantly higher Time 2
PA (M¼3.07, SD ¼.83) than participants in the abundant
access group (M¼2.56, SD ¼.79), p¼.03, or the control group
(M¼2.64, SD ¼.75), p¼.03; the abundant access group and
the control group did not differ from each other, p¼.98.
In addition, t-tests confirmed that participants in the abun-
dant access group exhibited a significant decline in PA after eat-
ing chocolate (M¼".38, SD ¼.71) from Time 1 to Time 2,
t(17) ¼2.28, p¼.04, while those in the control group showed
a marginal decrease (M¼".35, SD ¼.91), t(20) ¼1.75, p¼
.10, and those in the restricted access group exhibited a nonsigni-
ficant increase (M¼.15, SD ¼.70), t(15) ¼.86, p¼.41.
Savoring
There were no Time 1 differences in savoring, F(2, 52) ¼0.73,
p¼.49. Thus, we conducted an ANCOVA predicting Time 2
savoring scores from condition, controlling for Time 1 savor-
ing. This analysis revealed significant between-group differ-
ences in Time 2 savoring, F(2, 51) ¼6.63, p¼.003,
Z
p
2
¼.21. Pairwise comparisons showed that participants in
the restricted access condition savored the chocolate
(M¼5.08, SD ¼.94) more than those in the abundant access
condition (M¼4.03, SD ¼1.10), p¼.001, or control condition
(M¼4.31, SD ¼.86), p¼.006, whereas participants in the
latter two groups did not differ from each other, p¼.49.
In addition, t-tests showed that participants in the abundant
access condition exhibited a significant decrease in savoring
(M¼".85, SD ¼1.21) from Time 1 to Time 2, t(17) ¼
2.96, p¼.009, as did controls (M¼".75, SD ¼.84), t(20)
¼4.12, p¼.001, whereas those in the restricted access group
exhibited a nonsignificant increase in savoring (M¼.33, SD ¼
1.07), t(15) ¼1.24, p¼.23.
Mediation
Our results suggest that participants were more likely to savor
chocolate after having restricted (vs. abundant) access to it,
thereby promoting positive emotions. To test this hypothesis,
we examined whether the effect of being in the restricted access
condition versus the abundant access condition on PA at Time
2 was mediated by savoring. For consistency with our preced-
ing analyses, we entered our Time 1 measures of PA, savoring,
and dispositional happiness as covariates in the mediation anal-
yses; this approach is consistent with Baron and Kenny’s
(1986) recommendation to obtain and control for prior mea-
sures of mediator and dependent variables, thereby increasing
the internal validity of mediation analyses (note that running
the analyses without these covariates does not substantively
alter the results).
As depicted in Figure 1, when Time 2 savoring was included
along with group condition (coded as restricted access ¼þ1,
abundant access ¼"1) in a regression predicting Time 2
PA, the relationship between experimental condition and PA
became weaker, suggesting mediation. To test the significance
of the indirect effect (i.e., the path through the mediator), we
used a bootstrapping procedure, as recommended by Shrout
and Bolger (2002). Bootstrapping involves the repeated extrac-
tion of samples from the data set and the estimation of the indi-
rect effects in each resampled data set. The totality of all the
estimated indirect effects allows the construction of a 95%
confidence interval (CI) for the effect size of each indirect
effect. The indirect effect is significant at p< .05 if the 95%CIs
do not include 0. In line with recommendations by Preacher
and Hayes (2008), we performed bootstrapping with 5,000
resamples and 95%bias-corrected and accelerated CIs. The
results demonstrated that 0 was not included in the 95%CI for
the indirect effect (CI low ¼.06; CI high ¼.37). Thus, parti-
cipants in the restricted access condition experienced more
PA after eating a piece of chocolate than participants who had
abundant access to chocolate, and this effect was statistically
explained by their greater propensity to savor their experience
Discussion
The present experiment provides the first evidence that tempo-
rarily giving up something pleasurable may provide an effec-
tive route to happiness. Participants savored a piece of
chocolate significantly more and derived more PA from eating
it if they had given up chocolate for a week (restricted access
condition) rather than receiving an abundant supply of it (abun-
dant access condition) or maintaining their usual chocolate
consumption habits (control condition). When participants ate
a piece of chocolate in the second lab session, those in the
abundant access and control conditions savored it less than they
had a week earlier, when they had first been asked to eat
chocolate in the lab. Likewise, people in the abundant access
condition exhibited a significant drop in the PA they experi-
enced after eating chocolate in the lab from 1 week to the next,
while those in the control condition exhibited a trend in the
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same direction. These simple findings depict a powerful barrier
to human happiness: the appreciation and delight we derive
from a positive experience may quickly fade when that experi-
ence is repeated. Our results suggest, however, that this slow
slide toward disenchantment may be disrupted by temporarily
giving up something we like; participants in the restricted
access condition savored chocolate and experienced just as
much pleasure from it during the second tasting as they had
during the first, defying the typical pattern of hedonic adapta-
tion (e.g., Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999).
Researchers have been interested in hedonic adaptation for
decades, but Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2012) recently pointed
out that most work has focused on negative events, leaving the
processes that underlie adaptation to positive experiences
relatively unexplored. The present work provides empirical
evidence that savoring may represent an important mechanism
in understanding when and why people adapt to positive
experiences. That is, a positive experience—such as getting
course credit for eating chocolate—may provide reduced
happiness when it is repeated because we are less likely to
upregulate our positive emotions.
Although the observed differences were starkest between
people who were asked to abstain from chocolate and those
who were given an abundant supply of it, individuals in our
control condition exhibited a pattern of responses that was very
similar to participants in the abundant access condition. This
convergence presumably stems from the fact that chocolate is
abundantly available in our society, leaving those in the control
condition with easy access to chocolate. While most university
students can easily afford chocolate, wealthier individuals may
see life more broadly as a kind of candy store, in which a wide
range of pleasures are readily available for purchase. Ironically,
such abundance may undermine appreciation, reducing the
positive emotions that enjoyable experiences provide and
helping to account for the surprisingly weak relationship
between wealth and happiness (Quoidbach et al., 2010).
The present research points to a simple intervention that can
reduce the detrimental effects of such abundance: By choosing
to give something up temporarily, people may restore their
capacity to enjoy it. Because frequently indulging in common
forms of pleasure may also come at a cost to our wallets or our
waistlines, giving up something enjoyable may be particularly
worthwhile for this class of pleasures, considering the other
benefits of reduced consumption. It is worth noting, however,
that there was an elevated drop-out rate in the restricted access
condition, raising the possibility that ‘‘give it up’’ interventions
might require some self-control, and might therefore be better
suited for some individuals than others. This idea aligns well
with recent theorizing, which emphasizes that happiness inter-
ventions are not ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ and need to be well
matched with an individual’s personal characteristics (Lyubo-
mirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky,
2004).
Future research should also determine whether simply
perceiving oneself as relatively deprived might enhance savor-
ing. Recent research shows that increasing individuals’ subjec-
tive sense of the time elapsed since they last consumed their
favorite food can increase their desire to consume it (Redden
& Galak, in press). From a theoretical perspective,this work pro-
vides evidence that perceptions of past consumption may matter
more than actual consumption in shaping current desires. In
daily life, however, the most straightforward way to alter percep-
tions of past consumption may be to change actual consumption,
supporting the value of ‘‘give it up’’ interventions.
Indeed, many cultural and religious practices—from New
Year’s resolutions to the Catholic observation of Lent—
involve reducing consumption of something pleasurable.
Although these practices are typically associated with
self-denial, the present research provides intriguing evidence
that temporarily giving up something pleasurable may provide
a more productive route to happiness than consistently indul-
ging in pleasure, highlighting the ironic benefits of asceticism.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
β = .50** β = .48**
(β = .09)
Restricted
(vs. Unlimited)
Access
Positive Affect
Savoring
β = .32*
Figure 1. Results of regression analyses showing that savoring mediates the effect of experimental condition (restricted access ¼þ1, abundant
access ¼"1) on positive affect. Asterisks indicate coefficients significantly different from 0. *p< .05. **p< .01.
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Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research and/or authorship of this article: The French Community
of Belgium and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
Notes
1. An additional nine participants (seven of whom were in the
restricted access condition) signed up for the first session of this
study but failed to return for the second session. Participants may
not have shown up for the second session because they failed to
follow the experimental instructions during the week between
sessions, or because the second session did not fit in their sche-
dules. There were no significant differences between participants
who dropped out of the study and those who did not on any of the
study variables at Time 1 across conditions (all ts < 1.16), and
within the restricted access group only (all ts<1.51).Bootstrap-
ping procedures yielded similar results (all 95%CI included 0).
2. We also included several additional measures of related
constructs (e.g., implicit affect) on an exploratory basis in the
questionnaires. Although these measures were not the focus of
the present work, these tertiary results are available from the
authors upon request.
3. These as are low due to the multidimensional nature of savoring,
but can be increased if we rely only on the three self-report items,
which share method variance (a
Time1
¼.67; a
Time2
¼.70). Using
this 3-item measure did not change the significance of any of the
results; thus, we retained the behavioral display measure given its
theoretical importance in the conceptualization of savoring.
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Bios
Jordi Quoidbach, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychology
Department at Harvard University. His work focuses on positive emo-
tion regulation.
Elizabeth W. Dunn, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of
British Columbia. Her work focuses on happiness and self-knowledge.
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