Travel and the Psychology of Pleasure, Desire, and Happiness
Photo by Bas van Wylick, Unsplash
The night before boarding the plane, you spent the last few hours at home excitedly packing your favorite swimsuits and listing down every promising recommended location on TripAdvisor.
There’s always a rush when you travel. The sun reflecting off the water, the sound of waves, the steady tingle of your skin burning, your smile wide; this weekend escape was exactly what you needed. The thought of the salty air and frozen cocktails by the beach never seems to age. But before the weekend is even over, you’re on your way to planning the next getaway.
This constant chase of more trips, more lighthearted memories, more frozen margaritas by the beach, and the rush of traveling actually has a name. And we’ve been walking over it since.
The Psychology Behind Pleasure, Desires, and the Hedonic Treadmill
Before we had the luxury of chasing cheap thrills, our ancestors were being chased by deadly thrills—predators. When your life constantly flashes before your eyes, there’s little room for seeking pleasurably-flashing festivities.
Since we’ve replaced animalistic predators with taxes, social media, and cancel culture, we’ve had more room for hedonistic, indulgent ways of living such as finding the love of your life on a dating app with a swipe of a thumb or as paradoxical as it may seem, living a minimalist lifestyle.
A human’s modern-day continuous attempt to predict the future is another relatively new mental trick. Unlike our ancestors who spent their time focusing on every present movement in order to survive, we hopelessly stitch together a possible future regardless of how bad we are at doing so. In short: the less time spent on surviving, the more time we put on striving for things outside of our biological needs.
First coined by Brickman and Campbell in the 1970s, the hedonic treadmill theory suggests that each person has a happiness baseline that they return to regardless of what happens to them. It’s the psychological explanation of the bliss felt during the pursuit of happiness and the dissatisfaction over time once that happiness is yours. This is similar to that of an elastic band; you pull that band as far as you can, and no matter how long it takes for it to regain its natural state, it will return to normal. Spikes in pleasure pull our happiness elastic band away from the baseline.
Interestingly, the moment we feel the initial rush of pleasure is the moment our happiness elastic band begins to retract back to its natural state. As mentioned in Blindsight, at the biological level of the brain, pleasure climbs, and peaks right before the experience. You know that friend who hypes up the party before even getting there? This friend of yours is just how dopamine acts within our brains. It’s the neurotransmitter that acts as the key player in the drive towards something. That rush you feel before you do something exciting? That’s your brain releasing dopamine. This dopaminergic excitement felt during the build-up anteceding an event doesn’t last forever. The claim is that after the initial shock of an experience, habituation kicks in, and you’re left wanting the thrill of the chase all over again. This is just like how habituation in our daily lives leads to the loss of our attention. The longer you sit in that happiness, the more time you have to think about where else you can find pleasure. This explains why you can’t stop thinking about planning the next big trip while you sip on your frozen cocktail by the beach.
Everybody loves to travel, which can be directly attributed to the fact that trips are packed with many surprises. Our brains love randomization, and if our expectation of an event is exceeded, a blast of dopamine is released. Even if pleasure peaks right before an event, we can still walk away from a weekend getaway feeling as though we are on a “high.” The anticipation build-up of an upcoming trip may leave you with butterflies of excitement, but it is the unpredictable pleasurable moments that leave you on cloud nine.
The hedonic treadmill is to consumer psychology what gravity is to physics. It just is. It’s always at work, and there’s no stopping it. But it helps to know about it so we can develop the right emotional muscles to respond. Here’s a look into how the tourism industry applies this hedonic treadmill theory to influence consumer behavior.
Hedonic Treadmill and Its Impact on the Tourism Industry and Consumer Behavior
The tourism industry sells airplane tickets and resort rooms with ads of smiling faces and sunny sceneries. But above all, they sell us the promise of happiness on the other side of that purchase. Take the “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign launched by the country’s Department of Tourism in 2012. Their promotions included crystal clear turquoise waters and Philippine local boats sailing towards the islands.
The promotions consisted of several witty phrases. On top of a picture that most would claim is paradise, they paint in big bold letters “Commuting. It’s More Fun in the Philippines.”
The ads were not only made by the Department of Tourism. The promotion is actually known for being one of the cheapest successful ads of all time. Filipinos online jumped on the bandwagon and began creating their own versions. Take this example, where the negative connotation of “getting lost” is given a 180 spin.
Source: Philippine Department of Tourism, ExperiencePhilippines.org
Now whether or not commuting or getting lost is more fun in the Philippines is not the point, the campaign stands on top of the core of the hedonic treadmill principle: the grass is always greener on the other side. The campaign did so well that it led to a 16% rise in foreign tourists for the first quarter of that year, generating $4.4 billion in income. The campaign slogan also landed third among the 100 smartest marketing campaigns in the world.
With most companies selling us the idea that vacationing makes us happier, this brings us to the question of, are we really much happier? Well yes, at least temporarily. It has been found that the experience of traveling may add to your happiness in two ways. Firstly, through direct effects of the holiday trip itself, where they have distinguished three points of pleasure peaks: (1) The anticipation of the trip, (2) The experience of the trip itself, and (3) The post-trip after-glow. Secondly, indirect elements such as recalling memories through photos or souvenirs, impressions, and new meanings through social networks can elicit sparks of pleasure and nostalgia. That being said, pleasure is notoriously fleeting. And despite the happiness felt during each period of the traveling process, you’re still left wanting more. As we know now, the post-trip afterglow doesn’t last forever, and despite having a great time at your weekend getaway, you’re likely to return to your happiness baseline.
Hedonic Treadmill Applied in Tourism Advertising
Let’s talk about tourism in the US. Due to the pandemic, travel spending in 2020 suffered a 42% decline from 2019, totaling only $679 billion compared to over a trillion dollars without the pandemic. Media outlets in 2020 spoke about how traveling would never be the same again. It could take years to recover what was lost. Maybe they were right, but data shows that the industry has experienced significant progress since April 2020. From $17 billion in April, the industry jumped to $62 billion in August - something the media outlets failed to predict. Why could this be the case? Perhaps it’s the drive to break the routine and go smell that sweet green grass on the other side of the purchase.
With restrictions loosening and more opportunities to travel opening, companies are beginning to market their tourist destinations once again. Take New York City, which launched the biggest advertising campaign in decades. They aim to lure 10 million visitors to the city for overnight stays or day trips between Memorial Day and Labor Day. How so? By dragging people up the hedonic treadmill once more.
Source: New York Times
Remember all those plans you wanted to make pre-pandemic? You can make them now. Remember all the people you miss? We have the answer; invite them over. Happiness can be bought once again, just buy that ticket to New York City—this is exactly the mentality that they are striving for. And this is just one of the many marketing tactics that might walk the tourism industry back into good health.
The Hedonic Treadmill Never Stops: Is Happiness Attainable?
The hedonic treadmill does sound quite frustrating. If you’re constantly chasing tomorrow, how are you supposed to enjoy today? Do not fret; your happiness baseline is neither neutral nor unchangeable. Happiness is relative depending on the person, and studies have shown that meditation can help you escape the hedonic treadmill, even if it’s only for a brief moment. But with apps like Calm and Headspace hegemonizing the meditation market, it seems that we’re also steadfastly walking our way to a spiritual treadmill. But that’s for another day. One treadmill at a time.
Although the hedonic treadmill is endlessly moving with us endlessly climbing it, this is not to say that the attainment of true happiness is unreachable. Studies have shown that small and enjoyable everyday things can bring as much, or even more, happiness to your life as winning the lottery or buying a yacht.
So when something causes that happiness elastic band to stretch out wide, feel that stretch. It’s the mere aspect of impermanence that makes that pleasure all the more worth noticing.
What’s Next?
References
ExperiencePhilippines.org: “Commuting. It’s More Fun In The Philippines”. http://experiencephilippines.org
Johnson, M., & Ghuman, P. (2020). Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains. BenBella Books.
Manila Times: Tourism is more fun in the Philippines
New York Times: New York City to Reluctant Tourists: Please Come Back, Patrick McGeehan
Research Gate: Example poster of the "It's More Fun in the Philippines" tourism campaign, Miggy Andres Bigay
U.S. Travel Association: COVID-19 Travel Industry Research
Dive into the fascinating intersection of psychology and marketing and how to use psychological biases in marketing strategy.