Research done by Sonja Lyubomirsky indicates that major life setbacks and traumatic experiences can permanently lower a person's happiness level.

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Examining the claim about Sonja Lyubomirsky's research, we need to evaluate how happiness responds to major life setbacks and trauma.
Option 1: True. If we interpret this as Lyubomirsky asserting that happiness drops permanently after setbacks, this would conflict with much of the happiness literature. Lyubomirsky’s work on the happiness set-point and adaptation suggests that people tend to return toward their baseline happiness levels after fluctuations due to life events, though not everyone recovers fully and some people experience lasting effects. Therefore, labeling happiness as permanently lowered would oversimplify and misstate the nuanced findings.
Option 2: False. This aligns with the mainstream interpretation of Lyubomirsky’s research: while traumatic experiences can cause distress and reduce well-being in the short term, most individuals show a degree of adaptation over time, returning toward their baseline happiness, and happiness is not inexorably fixed at a permanently lower level. This option captures the idea of resilience and adaptation described in the literature.
Option 3: True. Reconsidering with nuance, this would imply universal permanence of happiness change after trauma, which contradicts the adaptive response observed in many individuals and the notion of a set-point that is resistant to permanent shifts after a single event.
Option 4: False. This restates the essential idea that the statement is inaccurate,: happiness is not necessarily permanently lowered by trauma, due to adaptation and individual differences in resilience, coping, and circumstances.
In summary, the core contrast is between a permanent reduction in happiness versus the idea of adaptation toward a baseline over time. The research framing typically supports adaptation rather than irrecoverable loss of happiness, making the proposition in the stem inconsistent with the broader findings in Lyubomirsky’s work.

Accelerated ELL Writing 1 | The How of Happiness: Chapter 1 Quiz

Research done by Sonja Lyubomirsky indicates that major life setbacks and traumatic experiences can permanently lower a person's happiness level.

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