By adminweaIn the financial lottery, participants pay for a ticket and then try to match numbers that are randomly selected by a machine. If they do, they win a prize. Many states operate state-sponsored lotteries, and their popularity is often tied to the fact that they are viewed as a painless source of tax revenue. But the reason people continue to play is less clear, despite the high probability of losing. Leaf Van Boven, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has conducted research into how people make decisions when playing the lottery. He argues that the lottery’s popularity stems from the positive emotions people experience when imagining themselves experiencing different outcomes.
The villagers in Jackson’s story are a good example of the power that tradition can have even when the meaning of that tradition has been forgotten or is no longer purposeful. It’s the sort of unquestioned practice that, when challenged, is quickly branded as crazy or foolhardy.
But it’s not just the villagers in the story that exhibit this phenomenon. Anyone who has ever played the lottery and felt a hair’s breadth away from winning can relate to this illusion of control. In reality, however, the outcome of each lottery drawing is entirely random. And the underlying problem, according to Van Boven, is that people tend to underestimate their own role in a negative outcome by attributing it to something outside their own control, such as bad luck.