3 reasons why we keep buying lottery tickets even though the winning rate is extremely low

What makes millions rush to buy lottery tickets with a very small chance?

The Powerball jackpot has just hit $ 1.5 billion - and the prospect of hiring that huge amount of money home will definitely linger in our heads, even for the least money-conscious.

Unfortunately, the odds for you to win are only 1 in 292 million. In fact, that's just the number on the Powerball website.

So what made millions rush to buy lottery tickets before the night of the dial on Wednesday?

We spoke with Robert Williams, a professor of health sciences and gamble at Lethbride University, Alberta, who pointed out three interesting psychological phenomena to explain crazy behavior. this.

Of course, we didn't stop you from buying lottery tickets. But the ideas below will help you - and others - understand why you are attracted to this.

A man holds a Powerball lottery in his hand.

1. We turn ourselves into prey for the "almost hit" effect

The "near-hit" effect is described by when you feel you are almost winning the prize and want to try again - even when you're far away you reach the "close" threshold .

Williams explained why this effect happened with Powerball. As mentioned above, the ability for you to get all six numbers is about 1 in 292 million.

So chances are you get three out of six numbers? Surely many people will not be able to think but divide half the number and give 1 result out of 146 million. But you are wrong. Actually only about 1 in 600. (Even if you only get three numbers, the prize is only 7 USD.)

The problem is that when people get half of those numbers, they will think in their heads that they have come "very close !!!" and quickly head back into the game. So while they believed that they only missed the target a bit, the difference in probability actually reached hundreds of millions.

2. Our brains have not evolved to be able to recognize such a low probability

"We just evolved to be able to evaluate certain numbers , " William said. For example, one can easily recognize the difference between an army of 10 when confronting an enemy of 100 or 1000 people.

Numbers that surpass that level, then, have never been realistic throughout human history. Who needs to count the number of stars in the sky or the number of grass on a field?

Therefore, the ratio of 1 to 292 million does not differ much from the ratio, for example, 1 out of 100,000 - at least until you have not thoroughly considered it.

So, the fact that the rate for you to win the Powerball jackpot has just increased from 1 to 175 million to 1 on 292 million can not shake people's minds about buying lottery tickets.

When we try to find the ratio to win the Powerball jackpot, you only think about the few winners that you already know .

3. Lottery also contributes to our "available trends"

"Trends available" are concepts when we overestimate how an event relies on how that event is engraved in our memory.

So when we try to find the ratio to win the Powerball jackpot, Williams thinks that you only think of the few winners you know - instead of millions of people who have never won.

Because the winners always appear on newspapers, the losers are never, so the story of easy winners is much more present in our memories.

"This makes winning seem to be possible," said Williams.

Should you buy lottery tickets?

Completely depends on you.

Williams, once said, did not want people to stop playing the lottery. There are a lot more serious games out there, and the damage that lottery brings (losing 2 USD) is relatively small.

And Williams also said that knowing how to buy a lottery is also a cheap form of entertainment - it's worth $ 2 for a chance to dream of becoming a millionaire. Only when you realize "there is no real chance to win the prize," he said, it was perfectly okay to participate.

Perhaps the biggest problem of the lottery today, Willams said, is the way they describe the effect of winning.

"They try to make the concept of how life will improve , " he said, when in fact, "we always adapt to what we have."

In other words, maybe you will be happy in the first few months after winning the jackpot, but then the excitement will disappear and you will have new things to care about, such as the stock market, for example.

As what billionaire Mark Cuban said: "If you are not happy with yesterday, it will not be satisfied with today. It's just money. It's not happiness."