Ok financially it is very dumb to buy a lottery ticket. But there may still be a good reason to buy one:
Your chances of winning the Powerball jackpot are about one in 175 million. But some social psychologists say you should do it anyway. That's because the benefit most of us get from playing the lotto has a lot more to do with the fantasy of winning money than the actual attainment of wealth.
"The lottery lets you believe in magic: that you will be the one who spent a little and got a lot; that you will defy the extraordinary odds against winning," reads an excerpt from a Psychology Today article titled "Lottery-itis!" It's that "Oh, the things I could buy, the places I'd go!" fantasy that grants us relief — albeit fleeting — from the stresses, conflicts, and perceived financial roadblocks in our real lives. In fact, neuroscientists have found that the prospect of winning the lottery activates the same brain circuits that would be triggered if we discovered that we actually possessed the winning ticket. "Our pleasure of living is not only based on our current situation, but what could be, what we can imagine our situation could become," behavioral decision making researcher George Loewenstein says.
