Maintaining Emotional Well-being

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The chapter explores how individuals maintain their emotional well-being through internal and external mechanisms, coping with setbacks and restoring baseline happiness levels. It questions the adaptation to both negative and positive events, pondering why good experiences may diminish over time despite expectations of continuous happiness.

Can you be too happy? Psychologist Adam Mastroianni talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about our emotional control systems, which seem to work at bringing both sadness and happiness back to a steady baseline. Too much happiness is--perhaps surprisingly--not necessarily a good thing. They also explore whether our general level of happiness is really related to events in our lives or connected to something much larger than ourselves.