Skip to main content
Original Article

Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill

Individual Differences in Response to Major Life Events

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000047

Theorists have long maintained that people react to major life events but then eventually return to a setpoint of subjective well-being. Yet prior research is inconclusive regarding the extent of interindividual variability. Recent theoretical models suggest that there should be heterogeneity in long-term stress responding (Bonanno, 2004; Muthén & Muthén, 2000). To test this idea, we used latent growth mixture modeling to identify specific patterns of individual variation in response to three major life events (bereavement, divorce, and marriage). A four-class trajectory solution provided the best fit for bereavement and marriage, while a three-class solution provided the best fit for divorce. Relevant covariates predicted trajectory class membership. The modal response across events was a relatively flat trajectory (i.e., no change). Nevertheless, some trajectories diverged sharply from the modal response. Despite the tendency to maintain preevent levels of SWB, there are multiple and often divergent trajectories in response to bereavement, divorce, and marriage, underscoring the essential role of individual differences.

References

  • Andrews, F. M., Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: America’s perception of life quality. New York: Plenum. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59, 20–28. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Ho, S. M. Y., Chan, J. C. K. , Kwong, R. S. Y., Cheung, C. K. Y., Wong, C. P. Y. , Wong, V. C. (2008). Psychological resilience and dysfunction among hospitalized survivors of the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong: A latent class approach. Health Psychology, 27, 659–667. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Moskowitz, J. T. , Papa, A. , & Folkman, S. (2005). Resilience to loss in bereaved spouses, bereaved parents, and bereaved gay men. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 827–843. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Neria, Y. , Mancini, A. , Coifman, K. G., Litz, B. , Insel, B. (2007). Is there more to complicated grief than depression and posttraumatic stress disorder? A test of incremental validity. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 342–351. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Rennicke, C. , Dekel, S. (2005). Self-enhancement among high-exposure survivors of the September 11th terrorist attack: Resilience or social maladjustment? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 984–998. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Westphal, M. , Mancini, A. D. (in press). Resilience to loss and potential trauma. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Bonanno, G. A., Wortman, C. B., Lehman, D. R. , Tweed, R. G., Haring, M. , Sonnega, J. , ... Nesse, R. M. (2002). Resilience to loss and chronic grief: A prospective study from preloss to 18-months postloss. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 83, 1150–1164. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Boscardin, C. K., Muthén, B. , Francis, D. J. , & Baker, E. L. (2008). Early identification of reading difficulties using heterogeneous developmental trajectories. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 192–208. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Brickman, P. , Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. In M. H. Appley, (Ed.), Adaptation level theory: A symposium (pp. 287–302). New York: Academic Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Brickman, P., Coates, D. , Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 917–927. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Burke, C. T., Shrout, P. E., Bolger, N. (2007). Individual differences in adjustment to spousal loss: A nonlinear mixed model analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31, 405–415. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Curran, P. J., Hussong, A. M. (2003). The use of latent trajectory models in psychopathology research. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 112, 526–544. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Currier, J. M., Neimeyer, R. A. , Berman, J. S. (2008). The effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for bereaved persons: A comprehensive quantitative review. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 648–661. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Deshields, T., Tibbs, T., Fan, M. Y. , Taylor, M. (2006). Differences in patterns of depression after treatment for breast cancer. Psychooncology, 15, 398–406. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 542–575. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Diener, E. , Lucas, R. E., Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305–314. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Enders, C. K. (2001). The performance of the full information maximum likelihood estimator in multiple regression models with missing data. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 61, 713–740. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Galatzer-Levy, I., Bonanno, G. A. , Mancini, A. D. (in press). From Marianthal to latent growth mixture modeling: A return to the exploration of individual differences in response to unemployment. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, Economics. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D. , Blumberg, S. J., Wheatley, T. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 617–638. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Graham, J. W. (in press). Missing data analysis: Making it work in the real world. Annual Review of Psychology. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Greenbaum, P. E., Del Boca, F. K. , Darkes, J. , Wang, C.-P. , Goldman, M. S. (2005). Variation in the drinking trajectories of freshmen college students. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73, 229–238. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Haisken-De New, J. P., Frick, R. (2003). Desktop companion to the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). Berlin: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44, 513–524. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lam, W. W. T., Bonanno, G. A., Mancini, A. D., Ho, S., Chan, M., Hung, W. K. , ... Fielding, R. (2010). Trajectories of psychological distress among Chinese women diagnosed with breast cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 19, 1044–1051. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lichtenstein, P., Gatz, M. , Pedersen, N. L., Berg, S. , McClearn, G. E. (1996). A co-twin-control study of response to widowhood. Journals of Gerontology Series B Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 5, 279. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lo, Y. , Mendell, N. , Rubin, D. (2001). Testing the number of components in a normal mixture. Biometrika, 88, 767–778. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lucas, R. E. (2005). Time does not heal all wounds: A longitudinal study of reaction and adaptation to divorce. Psychological Science, 16, 945–950. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lucas, R. E., Clark, A. E., Georgellis, Y. , Diener, E. (2003). Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 527–539. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lucas, R. E., Clark, A. E., Georgellis, Y. , Diener, E. (2004). Unemployment alters the set point for life satisfaction. Psychological Science, 15, 8–13. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Mancini, A. D., Pressman, D. L. , Bonanno, G. A. (2006). Clinical interventions with the bereaved: What clinicians and counselors can learn from the CLOC study. In D. Carr R. M. Nesse, C. B. Wortman, Eds., Spousal bereavement in late life (pp. 255–278). New York: Springer Publishing. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Muthén, B. (2003). Statistical and substantive checking in growth mixture modeling: Comment on Bauer and Curran (2003). Psychological Methods, 8, 369–377. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Muthén, B. , Muthén, L. K. (2000). Integrating person-centered and variable-centered analyses: Growth mixture modeling with latent trajectory classes. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 24, 882–891. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Nagin, D. S. (1999). Analyzing developmental trajectories: A semiparametric, group-based approach. Psychological Methods, 4, 139–157. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.4.2.139 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Nylund, K. L., Asparouhov, T. , Muthén, B. (2007). Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling. A Monte Carlo simulation study. Structural Equation Modeling, 14, 535–569. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • OECD. (2008). Consumer price indices. Retrieved from stats.oecd.org/wbos/Index.aspx?querytype=view&queryname=221. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Pinquart, M. , Schindler, I. (2007). Changes of life satisfaction in the transition to retirement: A latent-class approach. Psychology and Aging, 22, 442–455. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Schaeffer, C. M., Petras, H. , Ialongo, N. , Masyn, K. E., Hubbard, S. , Poduska, J. , & Kellam, S. (2006). A comparison of girls’ and boys’ aggressive-disruptive behavior trajectories across elementary school: prediction to young adult antisocial outcomes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74, 500–510. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Schaeffer, C. M., Petras, H. , Ialongo, N. , Poduska, J. , Kellam, S. (2003). Modeling growth in boys’ aggressive behavior across elementary school: Links to later criminal involvement, conduct disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. Developmental Psychology, 39, 1020–1035. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Schulz, R. , Beach, S. R., Lind, B. , Martire, L. M. , Zdaniuk, B., Hirsch, C. , ... Burton, L. (2001). Involvement in caregiving and adjustment to death of a spouse: Findings from the caregiver health effects study. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, 3123–3129. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Suh, E. , Diener, E. , & Fujita, F. (1996). Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1091–1102. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar