People play the lottery because of the fact that the brain is not able to realize the insignificance of a chance to win

Many people love the lottery: in the UK, for example, the National Lottery every week taking part of 32 million people, and everyone buys an average of three tickets every time, despite the fact that the chance of winning - one in 14 million.

However, this very slim chance of success makes us play again and again, because the brain can not objectively accept the fact that the odds of winning are so small.



According to research by Adam Piora, the human brain in the process of evolution could not develop the ability to calculate the coefficients: the ancient people made decisions in which the answer would be yes or no - for example, represents a particular predator threat or not.

Despite the fact that in the development of our brain has learned to do more complex calculations, when confronted with a problem that we can not solve, in particular, mathematically, the brain automatically inclined to simple and quick solution like buying a lottery ticket.



George Loewenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, calls this phenomenon "magical thinking" that we used to call "the sixth sense." The fact that the confusion and uncertainty arising from the need to take difficult decisions, lead us to choose "yes". In addition, when we hear about big win, you automatically imagine how we would have spent the money that activates the same areas of the brain, as if we actually won.

Lottery tickets are designed so that a person could feel that this time came close to winning, and this causes him to try again. Piora argues that most players do not realize that the chances of winning are actually getting worse with each successive attempt.

Interestingly, the lottery are very popular among people with low income, despite the fact that they have less money to spend. They think that they can no longer win than to lose, and at the time of ticket purchase amount of € 1 seems to them a little.

via factroom.ru