Why Do We Play Powerball?

파워볼사이트 drawing scheduled for Saturday night. The prize is estimated at $600 million

Chances to win are just one-in 175.2 million, as per Powerball

The attraction is that everybody else is buying tickets, according to experts.

Six numbers can be used to alter your life.

Perhaps your child is sick and you have hospital expenses to be paid. You might have been laid off from work and are concerned about making enough money to pay the rent. Maybe you’re still working an occupation but it’s a pain and you’d like to spend the next 50 years in a sandy beach with a Mai Tai in your hand.

Whatever the situation, the current estimated Powerball winnings of $1.5 billion is likely to fix it. Which makes us wonder about playing the lottery, can we all just a bunch of damsels in distress?

“People love to have the fantasy of rescuing someone else,” human behavior expert Dr. Wendy Walsh told CNN in 2011, after it was announced that the Mega Millions jackpot hit $656 million. “We do have the Cinderella problem – we have a fairy godmother to be there to help us.”

We’ve all heard about the numbers. The odds of getting the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 175.2 million. It is more likely that you will be stung by a bee (one out of 6.1 million) or to be caught by lightning (one in 3 million) or have conjoined twins (one in 100,000).

But people keep playing – most likely because the thought of winning is far more enjoyable than the prospect that you might be attacked by a shark (one in 11.5 million).

“It doesn’t faze them because they’re attracted to hopes,” Walsh said.

For the fiscal year 2012, U.S. lottery sales were $78 billion, in accordance with the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. Over half of us have participated in the lottery within the past year, and 20% of the players buy the majority of tickets.

One of the reasons is the fact that everybody else is doing it, said Dr. Stephen Goldbart, author of “Affluence Intelligence” and co-director of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute.

In an Psychology Today article titled “Lottery-itis!” Goldbart noted two main reasons why people buy tickets.

“Jumping onto the bandwagon is an age-old motivator of psychological behavior,” wrote Goldbart and his coworker, Joan DiFuria. “We desire to be part of the crowd, to feel “part of the group and not be left out.’ “

The second reason stems from an underlying sense of powerlessness that comes with change – regardless of whether it’s a shifting economy or changing the world.

“The path to the American Dream has been radically changed,” they wrote. “(The lottery) lets you believe in magic in the belief that you’ll be the one who paid tiny amount but won lots; that you will defy the odds of winning.”

Spend a bit, gain a lot – the basis for every good investment. The price of the lottery ticket is one of the most appealing aspects about it.

The lottery industry is often criticised for being a tax that is unfair to the most disadvantaged. In the average, households who make less than $12,400 a year are spending 5% of their income on lotteries, as per Wired.

As of 2008, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University attempted to clarify why people who are poor are more likely to purchase lottery tickets.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making The study suggested that players focus on the cost-to-benefit of a single ticket rather than consider the long-term costs of playing over a year or for a lifetime.

A few study participants were given one dollar at a time, and asked to use each dollar for an opportunity to win a lottery ticket, the writer George Loewenstein said. Another group was offered $5, and were asked to choose how many lottery tickets they would like to buy with the money. A third group were told that they could spend $5 for lottery tickets or purchase none at all.

The second group purchased less than those given $1 at a time. In the all-or-nothing situation 87% of participants bought no tickets. The researchers’ findings were in line with what’s called”peanuts effect. “peanuts impact.”

“There are some money sums which are so small that people almost ignore them,” Loewenstein said Wednesday.

“It is almost as if it doesn’t exist. The penny and lottery slots are kind of the most risk-free zone. They’re extremely cheap, affordable to play, however you can make a huge profit.”

Still, to say that playing the lottery is a bad idea doesn’t go over well with the professor of economics and psychology.

“It’s ridiculous to say it’s 51% or more of the population is self-destructive, irrational, or just uninformed,” he said. “It serves a psychological function for people. … Our pleasure of living isn’t just contingent on our present situation but also on what might happen our future. We can envision what the future could bring.”

Or not, millions will sit around on their computer and TV screens, praying that the six numbers they’re holding will show up.

They’re hoping that the fairy-tale end they’ve been awaiting is on the way regardless of whether it takes just a bit of magic.

파워볼사이트 drawing scheduled for Saturday night. The prize is estimated at $600 million Chances to win are just one-in 175.2 million, as per Powerball The attraction is that everybody else is buying tickets, according to experts. Six numbers can be used to alter your life. Perhaps your child is sick and you have hospital expenses…