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Post Hoc Research Paper

Decent Essays
For most of human existence, people have created a falsified causation between overall happiness in a person’s life and the collective amount of positive experiences. It seems like a logical series of events. If something good happens to someone that should in turn should make them, overall, a happier person. But do these positive events truly make a lasting impact on the overall nature of a person’s life? Research says no. So why does this psychological myth still exist so heavily in today’s world? One reason may be due to the assumptions made that insist those who have had good experiences are just naturally happier. This is a form of post hoc fallacy. The post hoc ergo propter hoc is a way of thinking that assumes because y followed x,…show more content…
Although this is true to some degree, it is mostly a flawed way of thinking due to the fact that research indicates that people who experience drastic changes in emotions due to an event often return to a baseline after an extended period of time. This is due to a phenomenon described as the hedonic treadmill. This happening compares the drastic change in emotion following an event to having to keep up when increasing the speed on a treadmill. Your emotions must keep up with the intensity of the event, but return to a resting state when the event concludes. In 1987, Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman published research, “Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?”. In this research the authors discovered that lottery winners and accident victims that acquired some sort of paralysis eventually ended up with similar levels of overall happiness. Accident victims even achieved a general…show more content…
Instead of relying on events themselves and more on the perception one has of the events, people would be more amply suited to determine their own happiness. People, to an extent, have the ability to determine their own
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