Powerball drawing scheduled for Saturday night. The prize is believed to be $600m
The odds of winning are 1 in 175.2 million, according to Powerball
The reason for this is the fact that everyone else is purchasing tickets, experts say
Six numbers are powerful enough to alter your life.
Maybe your kid is sick and there are hospital bills to pay. Perhaps you’ve lost your job and you’re concerned about making enough money to pay the rent. You might have some work however it’s not the best, and you’d prefer to enjoy the next 50 years in a sandy beach with a Mai Tai in hand.
Whatever the situation whatever your situation, the current projected Powerball Jackpot of $1.5 billion could fix it. Which makes us wonder what the odds are when winning the lottery, are we all just misfits?
“People enjoy having the fantasy of rescuing someone else,” human behavior expert Dr. Wendy Walsh told CNN in 2011, when it was announced that the Mega Millions jackpot hit $656 million. “We possess the Cinderella concept – there’s a fairy godmother who’s going to save us.”
We’ve all heard the statistics. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about one in 175.2 million. You’re more likely to suffer a fatal sting from a bee (one for 6.1 million), be hit with lightning (one in 3 million) or have twins who are conjoined (one in 200 000).
However, people continue to play – probably because the thought of winning is more enjoyable than the prospect of getting attacked by sharks (one in 11.5 million).
“It doesn’t bother them because they’re passionate about hope,” Walsh said.
In 2012, the fiscal year, U.S. lottery sales totaled $78 billion as per the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. Over half of us have taken part in the lottery within the past year, and 20% of players purchase the majority of their tickets.
The appeal is the fact that everyone else is doing it, said the Dr. Stephen Goldbart, author of “Affluence Intelligence” and co-director of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute.
In a Psychology Today article titled “Lottery-itis!” Goldbart noted two principal reasons that people purchase tickets.
“Jumping onto the bandwagon is an old-fashioned motivator for behavioral behavior,” wrote Goldbart and his colleague, Joan DiFuria. “We desire to be part of the in-crowd, to be part of the crowd rather than feeling excluded.’ “
The other reason is a sense of disempowerment caused by change, whether that’s due to a changing economy or the world.
“The map to finding that American Dream has been radically modified,” they wrote. “(The lottery) will make you believe in magic: that you will be the one who spent tiny amount but won lots as well as the odds to win.”
Pay a small amount, you’ll get a lot – the basis for every good investment. The low cost of the lottery ticket is one of the most appealing aspects about it.
This industry frequently criticised for being an unjust tax on the poor. The average household that earn less than $12,400 per year pay 5% of their income on lotteries, according to Wired.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University attempted to explain why the poor tend to be more likely to buy 파워볼사이트 tickets.
The study, published within the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making The study suggested that players focus on the benefit-cost ratio of just one ticket and do not consider the long-term costs that comes with playing for a whole year, or even a life time.
A few study participants were given 1 cent at a go and asked if they wanted to use every dollar to purchase tickets to the lottery, writer George Loewenstein said. Another group was presented with $5. They were then asked to choose how the number of tickets they’d like to purchase with the money. Members of a third group were informed that they could spend $5 for lottery tickets or purchase none at all.
The second group bought just half as many tickets as the ones offered $1 each. In the scenario of all or nothing 87% of people in the study purchased no tickets. The results of the study corresponded to something that is called”peanuts effect. “peanuts effect.”
“There are money amounts that are small enough that most people would rather not even think about them,” Loewenstein said Wednesday.
“It seems almost like it doesn’t even exist. The penny slot machines and the lottery are a most risk-free zone. They’re very cheap, low-cost to play, yet there’s a big possible upside.”
However, to suggest that taking part in the lottery is a bad idea does not sit well with the professor of psychology and economics.
“It’s absurd to think that 51% of people is irrational or self-destructive,” he said. “It has a psychological purpose for individuals. … Our enjoyment of living isn’t only dependent on the current circumstances but also on what might happen something we could imagine our circumstances could turn into.”
Irrational or not, millions will sit around their TV and computer screens in hopes that the numbers they’re clutching will appear.
They’re hoping that the fairy-tale finale they’ve waited for is coming regardless of whether it takes some magic.
The Little Red Journal Business Pages