Involves

Moment

Winners, victims, and a control group

Illinois, mid-1970s; interviews with recent lottery winners and people recently paralyzed in accidents

In a 1978 study, psychologists Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman interviewed three groups in Illinois: people who had recently won large lottery prizes, people who had recently been paralyzed in accidents, and a control group drawn from the same area. They measured general happiness and, tellingly, how much pleasure each group took from ordinary activities like eating breakfast or chatting with a friend.

Published
1978
Groups
Winners, victims, controls
Finding
Both adapted

The caveat

The samples were small, a few dozen people per group, and they came from one time and place, so the exact figures should be read as a striking illustration rather than a precise measurement. The broad pattern of adaptation has held up better than the specific numbers.

The winners were not dramatically happier than controls and reported taking less pleasure in everyday activities, while the accident victims, though less happy, were not as devastated as observers assumed. The study became one of psychology's most-cited illustrations of hedonic adaptation and helped launch modern happiness research, including later, larger work that both confirmed adaptation and mapped its limits.

The paper's memorable title asked whether lottery winners and accident victims end up on the same footing. That is the question the “treadmill” metaphor answers.

How it connects

The study that put a number on adaptation by interviewing people at the far edges of fortune.

This moment appeared in Happiness resets, the Involves connection for July 25, 2026, which asked: Why does the thing you were sure would make you happy stop working?

Check yourself

How did the 1978 researchers test hedonic adaptation?

By comparing happiness across lottery winners, accident victims, and a control group.. Right. The three-group contrast is what made the result vivid: fortune's extremes, measured side by side.

What the sources establish

  • Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman compared lottery winners, accident victims, and controls, finding evidence of substantial adaptation in both extreme groups.

Sources