The Knicks Won. Let’s Gamble!

Pacific Standard:

The lottery, it’s been said, is a tax for people who are bad at math, yet quite a lot of presumably intelligent people take the risk buying lottery tickets at least once in a while. Maybe they think it’s fun, maybe it’s an addiction, or maybe some people really are just that bad at math. Or, a new study argues, maybe it’s just a sunny day, the Knicks won, and people are feeling good.

“People in a good mood are more willing to gamble—or, more broadly, to accept risky bets,” write neuroscientists Ross Otto, Stephen Fleming, and Paul Glimcher in Psychological Science. That’s perhaps because people in a good mood tend to make overly optimistic assessments of their situations in everything from high finance to professional sports. If so, then whatever puts people in a good mood—even simple things, like a sunny day or a home team win—could increase the chances they’ll gamble.

Read the whole story: Pacific Standard