Decoding passion for playing lottery

Psychologists believe that people are passionate about playing lottery because they cannot imagine the extremely small recession rate and only think of those who won.

The prize of lottery games can reach billions, even tens of billions of dong, and the thought of bringing that money home is always in our minds. Unfortunately, your chances of winning are only about one million and 292 million.

So why do people still rush to buy lottery tickets? Sharing with Business Insider, Robert Williams, professor of health sciences at Lethbridge University (USA), gave 3 psychological reasons to explain this phenomenon.

Your chances of winning the lottery games are only about one million and 292 million.(Photo: irishcentral.com).

Effect "narrowly missed"

The " almost missed" effect is when you feel like you're about to win and want to try it again even if the opportunity is extremely small. As long as we have half a number of numbers that match the winning numbers, we think "almost I won" and continue to try more times.

The brain does not understand the low probability

According to Williams, thanks to evolution, humans can understand the meaning of numbers. Everyone knows the difference between an army of 100 soldiers and an army of 1,000 soldiers. However, if facing numbers beyond this range, the brain is very difficult to imagine. In fact, for most of us, the probability of one over 292 million and one in 100,000 is the same.

Feelings about availability

The sense of availability is a term that describes how people overestimate the likelihood of an event based on strong memories of the event. Simply put, when imagining yourself snatching the jackpot, you will immediately think of the small number of people who have won the prize, but don't pay attention to millions of buyers forever but still slip. Only the winner will appear on the front page of the newspaper while the loser will never. This makes the story of "champions" engraved in our minds and gives us the ability to earn huge bargains.

Should you buy a lottery ticket? Williams said this depends on the individual. The risk of playing lottery is quite low but each person needs to understand that this is merely a form of entertainment. Don't expect that the lottery will change your life because even if you win the prize, you're probably not happier.