Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1978, Vol. 36, No. 8, 917-927

Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?Philip Brickman and Dan Coates

Northwestern UniversityRonnie Janoff-Bulman

University of Massachusetts

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operateto prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as mightbe expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen theimpact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce thevalue of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sampleof 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted,lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly lesspleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effectswere not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buylottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lotterysalient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minorpleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness.

Is Happiness Relative?

The idea that happiness is relative is atleast as old as the Stoic and Epicurean phi-losophers of ancient Greece. It is also a solu-tion to a number of intriguing puzzles inmodern social science. American soldiers inWorld War II with a high school educationor better had greater chances of being pro-moted but were less happy with their promo-

We wish to thank the following students who pro-vided valuable assistance in collecting data for thefirst study: Debbie Ahner, Lowry Alexander, MaryJo Barrett, Daryl Brandford, Dana Day, Pat Dennis,Susan Froikin, Frederick Garnett, Dana Gimbel,Rick Grossman, Elizabeth Guthridge, Jim Howard,Bob Hoyt, Aaron Janis, Janine Kushner, LeslieLevin, Rodney Martin, Dawson Moorer, PattiRiedle, Wendie Rose, Yamima Rubens, Eric Tep-litz, and Eileen Wise. We are also grateful to Col-leen Dudgeon, Dorothy Echols, Steve Rosenthal, IraShapiro, Kurt Walsh, and Rhonda Welfare for theirhelp with the follow-up study. Finally, we wish tothank Ralph Batch, Illinois State Lottery Superin-tendent, and Dennis Stone, Vice-President of Her-bert H. Rozoff Associates, for their friendly coop-eration.

Requests for reprints should be sent to PhilipBrickman, Department of Psychology, NorthwesternUniversity, Evanston, Illinois 60201.

tion chances. Merton and Kitt (19SO) evolvedthe notion of relative deprivation to explainthis fact, among others. The better educatedsoldiers saw themselves as doing poorly com-pared to their peers in civilian life or theirpeers who were already officers. Less welleducated soldiers, on the other hand, sawthemselves as reasonably well off compared tosimilar others in civilian life or their peers inthe service. Individuals in an experimentalgroup that was objectively worse off, becauseone member was disadvantaged, were moresatisfied than individuals in a group whereeveryone was equal or where one member wasadvantaged. Brickman (1975) predicted thisresult from the fact that in the first case,individuals would enhance the relative valueof their own outcome by comparing it withthe less fortunate other, whereas in the lattertwo cases, there would be no such compari-son to elevate their appreciation of theirstanding.

Curiously enough, however, the limits ofthe proposition that happiness is relative havenever been tested. If happiness were com-pletely relative, groups that had receivedextremes of good and bad fortune in lifewinning a million dollars versus suffering a

Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/78/3608-0917$00.75

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918 P. BRICKMAN, D. COATES, AND R. JANOFF-BULMAN

crippling accidentshould differ from oneanother in happiness much less than we mightexpect. The most general framework for con-sidering this possibility is adaptation leveltheory (Helson, 1964), whose application tothe pursuit of pleasure and questions of hap-piness has been developed by Brickman andCampbell (1971). The most general principleof adaptation level theory is that people'sjudgments of current levels of stimulationdepend upon whether this stimulation exceedsor falls short of the level of stimulation towhich their previous history has accustomedthem. Adaptation level theory offers twogeneral reasons for believing that recipientsof an extreme stroke of good fortune will notbe generally happier than persons who havenot been dealt such good fortune. The first iscontrast. The second is habituation.

Contrast and Habituation

Experiences that are salient or extreme andsimultaneously relevant to other experiencesserve as heavily weighted inputs for adapta-tion level (Eiser & Stroebe, 1972; Helson,1964). Winning a million dollars is both adistinctive event and an event that is relevantto many other life occurrences. Since it con-stitutes an extremely positive comparisonpoint, however, the thrill of winning the lot-tery should result in an upward shift in adap-tation level. Consequently, many ordinaryevents may seem less pleasurable, since theynow compare less favorably with past experi-ence. Thus, while winning $1 million canmake new pleasures available, it may alsomake old pleasures seem less enjoyable. Thatnew pleasures are offset by the compensatoryloss of old ones should in turn militate againstany general gain in happiness by lottery win-ners.

The second limit to good fortune is habitu-ation. Eventually, the thrill of winning thelottery will itself wear off. If all things arejudged by the extent to which they departfrom a baseline of past experience, graduallyeven the most positive events will cease tohave impact as they themselves are absorbedinto the new baseline against which furtherevents are judged. Thus, as lottery winnersbecome accustomed to the additional plea-

sures made possible by their new wealth, thesepleasures should be experienced as less in-tense and should no longer contribute verymuch to their general level of happiness. Insum, the effects of an extreme stroke of goodfortune should be weakened in the short runby a contrast effect that lessens the pleasurefound in mundane events and in the long runby a process of habituation -that erodes theimpact of the good fortune itself.

The same principles hold in reverse forgroups that surfer an extreme stroke of illfortune, like accidental paralysis. In theshort run, their unhappiness should be miti-gated by a contrast effect that enhances theimpact of mundane pleasures, which are nowcontrasted with the extreme negative anchorof the accident. In the long run, their unhap-piness should be mitigated by a process ofhabituation that erodes the impact of the ac-cident itself.

It was our purpose in this research to makea preliminary assessment of these proposi-tions. Study 1 consisted of short interviewswith three groups of people: a sample of lot-tery winners, a sample of paralyzed accidentvictims, and a sample of people who wereneither winners nor victims. Study 2 investi-gated the possibility that the results of Study1 were due 'to preexisting differences betweenpeople who buy lottery tickets and peoplewho do not or between interview contexts inwhich winning a lottery was more or lesssalient.

Study 1

MethodSamples

Accident victims. The sample of accident victimswas interviewed as part of an earlier study (see Bui-man & Wortman, 1977, for details). Eleven para-plegic and 18 quadraplegic respondents were drawnfrom the full-time patient population at a majorrehabilitation institute. Five other possible respon-dents were unavailable for interviews. Response ratewas thus 85%.

Lottery winners. The winners were selected froma list of 197 major winners in the Illinois StateLottery. Winners were selected to be interviewedprimarily on the basis of amount won, with largeramounts preferred. Proximity to other winners wasalso considered in the selection of this group, inorder to minimize traveling for the interviewers. In

IS HAPPINESS RELATIVE? 919

20 of the 42 attempted interviews, the potentialrespondent was either unattainable or unwilling, re-sulting in a 52% response rate. Among the 22 lot-tery winners who were interviewed, 7 won $1 million,6 won $400,000, 2 won $300,000, 4 won $100,000,and 3 won $50,000.

Controls. The names of 88 people who lived inapproximately the same areas of the city as thelottery winners were selected from the phone bookand used as the basic list from which the controlgroup was drawn. Contact was attempted with 58 ofthese individuals. The response rate was 41%, pro-viding a control group of 22 participants.

InterviewersAll of the paraplegic/quadraplegic respondents

were personally interviewed in a face-to-face situa-tion by a female graduate student. The winner andcontrol respondents were interviewed by 11 two-person teams of students. Three of these teams con-sisted of two males, three of a male and a female,and five of the teams were composed of two females.Each team interviewed two winners and two controlrespondents.

Five of the teams conducted interviews only overthe phone, whereas the remaining six teams tried forface-to-face interviews but settled for a phone inter-view if the respondent preferred this. Four of thecontrol respondents and 6 of the winners wereinterviewed face to face, and 18 control and 16winner participants were questioned over the phone.Past research (Janofsky, 1971; Rogers, 1976) hasindicated that results from telephone surveys arecomparable to results from face-to-face interviewing,and breakdown of our data found no differencesbetween the telephone and face-to-face samples.

ProcedureOnce the lists of winners and controls were com-

piled, letters were sent to all participants except twowinners whose names arrived too late. These lettersdescribed the study and the possibility that an inter-viewer would be phoning. This was done to givepeople who were not interested an advance oppor-tunity to refuse and to make the initial telephonecontacts easier. The letters sent to winners and con-trols differed in that winners were informed thatthe research was a study of lotteries, whereas thecontrol letters described the research as a study ofeveryday life. The control letter did not mentionlottery winners, in order to avoid instituting anunfavorable comparison for the controls. The letterto the winners did make this reference, since theserespondents were keenly aware of their special statusand would expect an interview to deal with it.Participants were promised the results of the studyif they were interested in them.

MeasuresAs general background, all respondents were asked

their age, occupation, race, religion, and level of

schooling. The lottery winner and accident victimgroups were then asked several open-ended ques-tions. Winners were first asked, "Has your life-style changed in any way since you won? How?"Winners and victims were asked, "Do you feel youin any way deserved what happened?" and also,"Do you ask yourself, 'Why me?' How do youanswer?" Respondents were also asked to rate howmuch credit or blame they assigned to themselvesfor their outcome and to divide 100% of the responsi-bility among four potentially causal factors: them-selves, others, the environment, and chance. Winnerswere asked to rate winning, and victims were askedto rate their accident, on a scale anchored by "thebest and worst things that could happen to you inyour lifetime."

For a measure of general happiness, respondentswere asked to rate how happy they were now (notat this moment, but at this stage of their life).They were also asked to rate how happy they werebefore winning (for the lottery group); before theaccident (for the victim group); or 6 months ago(for the control group). Finally, each group wasasked to rate how happy they expected to be ina couple of years.

For a measure of everyday pleasure, respondentswere asked to rate how pleasant they found each ofseven activities or events: talking with a friend,watching television, eating breakfast, hearing afunny joke, getting a compliment, reading a maga-zine, and buying clothes. The last item was addedspecifically for the lottery winner and controlgroups and was not asked of the accident victims.All ratings were made on 6-point scales rangingfrom 0 for "not at all" to 5 for "very much."

ResultsBackground Characteristics

For the most part, the different groupsused in this study were similar in back-ground. Men outnumbered women in eachcondition, with 63% of the winners, 55% ofthe controls, and 79% of the victims beingmales. Whites also held a consistent majorityacross groups, comprising 86% of the win-ners, 73% of the controls, and 72% of theparaplegics. The remainder of the winners(14%) and controls (27%) were black, aswere 24% of the victims. One handicappedrespondent was Latin American. About halfthe members of each group were Catholic(45% of winners, 50% of controls, and 48%of victims), and the rest were primarilyProtestant (50% of winners, 41% of con-trols, and 31^0 of victims). Five percent ofthe winners, 9% of controls, and 21% of theparaplegics practiced some other or no reli-gion.

920 P. BRICKMAN, D. COAXES, AND R. JANOFF-BULMAN

In all three groups, 45% of the participantshad finished their education with a highschool diploma. Thirty-two percent of thewinners, 18% of the controls, and 27% ofthe victims did not finish high school; 23%of the winners and controls and 21% of theparaplegics had some college training. Four-teen percent of the controls and 7% of thevictims had advanced graduate or profes-sional education. Most of the winners (63%)and controls (59%) held blue-collar jobs,and 23% of each of these groups consisted ofstudents, housewives, and others who weretechnically unemployed. The rest, 14% ofwinners and 18% of the controls, were inwhite-collar positions. The handicapped sam-ple was not asked for occupational informa-tion.

There were no significant differences amongthe study groups on any of these backgroundcharacteristics, but the paraplegic samplewas younger than the other two. The meanage for the handicapped group was 23 yearsold; it was 44 years for winners and 46 yearsfor controls, F ( 2 , 65) = 29.12, p < .001.

Life ChangesAlthough ,64% of the lottery winners gave

examples of how their lives had been changed,only 23% were willing to say that their life-style in general had changed. The large ma-jority of the changes mentioned were posi-tive, including financial security, increasedleisure time, easier retirement, and generalcelebrity status. Negative effects of winning,if any, were always mentioned together withsome positive feature. The life changes facedby the victims were severe and clearly evi-dent. These formerly independent individualsnow found themselves in a state near physicalhelplessness, in wheelchairs or beds, with theirdays at the rehabilitation center filled withtherapy sessions.

In general, lottery winners rated winningthe lottery as a highly positive event, andparaplegics rated their accident as a highlynegative event, though neither outcome wasrated as extremely as might have been ex-pected. On a scale where 0 represented theworst possible thing that could happen in alifetime and 5 represented the best possible

thing, with 2.50 as a hypothetical neutralpoint, lottery winners rated winning as 3.78,and victims rated their accident as 1.28. Theratings of the two groups are, of course, sig-nificantly different, F( l ,47)=37.31 , p