As the threatening faces became rare, the study participants began to perceive neutral faces as threatening. When the unethical research proposals became less frequent, people began deeming ambiguous research proposals unethical. He called this “prevalence-induced concept change.” Essentially “problem creep.” It explains that as we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. We end up with the same number of troubles. Except our new problems are progressively more hollow.
