I suppose it would be important to cross-reference the findings on hedonic bumps from buying things vs. purchasing experiences. I suspect things are proxies for experiences. The problem with the new car thing is that the hedonic experience is ‘new car’ but it stops being a new car very quickly. In contrast if your new boobs produce more pleasant experiences (as subjectively defined), they’re likely to continue to do so.

I disagree.

If you pay attention to the happiness research you can avoid doing things like buying a house next to a noisy airport (which people never adapt to);buy smaller houses closer to work, or shift your consumption from buying things to purchasing experiences (like trips and concerts).

And, happiness research has come up with some pretty surprising findings. Page 313 of this book points out that apparently people don’t hedonically adapt to breast augmentation/reduction surgery like they do to buying a new car:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3toRUh4L12EC&pg=PA302&dq=%22Hedonic+Adaptation%22+cosmetic+surgery#PPA313,M1

People who get breast augmentation/reduction surgery tend to stay happier. If you are on the fence with respect to breast augmentation/reduction surgery, you are better off going for it.

The Atlantic article points out that the person who understands the findings of the Harvard study best hasn???? been able to apply those findings to his own life, except perhaps that he understands his own failings better than most people do.

That guy was unable to recognize a picture of his third wife (who he was married to for 5 years in between the two times he was married to his second wife). He is not exactly an “unexamined life isn’t worth living” kind of guy. That isn’t surprising either:

Subjects that had, what Sackeim and Gur considered, the ability to self-deceive consistently indicated higher levels of happiness.

Btw, my colleague Bob Ritzema, a psychologist, maintains a blog (Life Assays) on the topic of happiness in which he does everything from survey and analyze current research to review movies. For the reasons you outline and more, he doesn’t think happiness is a very good goal.