BazermanMoore

Conclusion and Integration 83
Given this biological constraint on the sensitivity of our subjective utility scale, we
need to re-adjust our reference point by getting used to what we’ve got and then taking
it for granted. If we didn’t adjust our reference point, we could quickly hit the maximum
of our utility scale, and realize that nothing we could ever do would make us happier.
That would effectively kill our motivation to work harder, become richer, and
achieve more. In reality, of course, what happens is that we get used to our current
level of wealth, status, and achievement, and are then motivated to seek more, believing
that it will make us happier.
The irony of this motivational system is that for it to keep working, we have to
habituate to our new condition but not anticipate this habituation. Evidence does indeed
confirm that people adjust to both positive and negative changes in circumstances
with surprising speed, and then promptly forget that they did so (Brickman, Coates, &
Janoff-Bulman, 1978; Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998). Thus, we
find ourselves on a hedonic treadmill in which we strive for an imagined happiness that
forever slips out of our grasp, beckoning us onward (Brickman & Campbell, 1971;
Gilbert, 2006; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2006).