Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917-927. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.3
Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman use adaptation level theory to ask whether winning a fortune raises happiness as much as expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the pleasure of ordinary events, and habituation should reduce the value of new pleasures that winning makes possible. Major lottery winners were compared with controls and with people who had suffered paralysing accidents. Winners were not happier than controls and took less pleasure from a series of mundane events. A second study found that these effects were not due to pre-existing differences between ticket buyers and non-buyers or to how salient the lottery was in the interview.
Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman use adaptation level theory to ask whether winning a fortune raises happiness as much as expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the pleasure of ordinary events, and habituation should reduce the value of new pleasures that winning makes possible. Major lottery winners were compared with controls and with people who had suffered paralysing accidents. Winners were not happier than controls and took less pleasure from a series of mundane events. A second study found that these effects were not due to pre-existing differences between ticket buyers and non-buyers or to how salient the lottery was in the interview.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
6.8.917. Abstract read (Europe PMC): 22 major lottery winners, 22 controls, 29 paralysed accident victims interviewed previously; winners not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from mundane events; Study 2 ruled out preexisting differences between ticket buyers and non-buyers. Single-item happiness measure and group means (winners 4.00, controls 3.82, accident victims 2.96; winners against victims significant) from the World Database of Happiness catalogue entry.