Critical Views
One critical point made regarding our individual set point is to understand it may simply be a genetic tendency and not a completely determined criterion for happiness, and it can still be influenced.
The notion of "historical neglect", that people tend to focus more on negative emotions than positive emotions, can become a great detriment to improving our happiness set point. Negative emotions require more attention and are remembered better, overshadowing any positive experiences that may even outnumber negative experiences.
Ahmed and Koob (1998), in a study on moderate to excessive drug intake on rats, put forth that the use of mind-altering drugs such as cocaine can change an individual's hedonic set point; their study provides an animal model for the relation between excessive drug usage and how it affects our hedonic set point.
Read more about this topic: Hedonic Treadmill
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or views:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)