Psychology behind the lottery!

Hello World!

Welcome back to another post of the Free Play Lotto blog series! We’ve got a topic that we’d love to hear back from you all on… Why do people play the lottery? Why is it successful – and although people are almost guaranteed to lose- why do they keep on playing?

A lot of the following discussion will be speculative, with a couple of references – as to why WE think the lottery, and really gambling in general, are so popular.

Historical

First off, the lottery is a form of gambling – and gambling has been around for a LONG time. The farthest records indicate that gambling has been around nearly as long as people have been using currency to trade and barter things – so that’s at LEAST a couple thousand years. Throughout those years, gambling – which is defined as – playing a game for the chance of money, existed in many societies and took on many different forms across cultures. From using six sided dice to different length pick-up sticks – playing the odds is not that new to humans. And they have used it for different reasons – all stemming from business or, around money.

Odds, risk, or possibility/potential all have a place in business and are an integral part of investments to this day. But one distinction that is very important is the difference between gambling and investment. Gambling is not considered an investment because they are isolated game-like scenarios that exist outside of actual business – and they do not guarantee return of money, once spent. Investment guarantees return of money spent, it just doesn’t guarantee profit – or that the exact amount of money will be returned.

But let’s zoom back in a bit to America and the lottery.

America & The Lottery

The lottery, which is a form of gambling, first came into the public by being broadcasted by the state of New Hampshire as contest it’s citizens could enter. They were the first state to pioneer the modern lottery in the United States in the year of 1964. It was a lottery that was centered around horse racing.

Gradually, because of it’s success, other states started their own lotteries began and collectively they continued to gain more popularity. More and more states started to propagate state run lotteries that were played a variety of different ways, all dependent on small chances and occurrences of numbers. Along with this emergence, states were using the funds gained from lotteries for social programs and state-funded developments, ultimately benefitting the people who were participating in the contests. In tandem with the rising popularity of lotteries, the US government became compelled to legally regulate these lotteries, after some time, because they were being used to scam citizens of their money. Which is how the lotteries exist today – the only public-wide lotteries that are legal are ones run by the state government.

Popular Oddity

How did they become so popular?

By making the entry fee reasonably cheap enough and the collective potential winnings large enough, they realized more people would participate more often and pay to do so, if the contest entry fee was small enough. And so, through the years, the entry price for most lotteries continued to get smaller and smaller. Today, the cost of an entry ticket or ‘play-board’ as they call it, is $2, and for $1 you can multiply the amount of money you can win of non-jackpot prizes. You can spend more money to ‘better’ your odds, so you can end up spending a lot of money on a single contest- but the smallest amount you need pay is $3.

So it makes sense that people play, $3 is not a lot of money. But the odds of you winning off a single $3 entry in the Powerball is 1 in 292 million – reference our previous blog post on what those odds mean – but statistically it means it near impossible that YOU will win the lottery.

So the question still stands – psychologically why are people compelled to KEEP on playing the lottery even they continually lose? What’s going on where people are driven to sacrifice $3 dollars for an almost 0 % chance at winning, on a continual basis?

Why?

Well, here are a couple of things we thing are reasons why…

People hear the odds, but they don’t UNDERSTAND the odds. As is with a lot of things in life- hearing or seeing something is not the same as understanding it, or comprehending it. Upon every Powerball ticket is printed the odds of you winning the jackpot and a non-jackpot prize – Contestants see this and yet still buy them on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis. We believe it’s because people can see those odds printed and not fundamentally understand them. It’s a statement they can’t inherently visualize or immediately understand and so it’s almost as though it means nothing or not important information as to whether THEY will win.

The second reason which we believe is the most fundamental reason why people partake in lottery and much of life for that matter and that is… Hope.

Everyone who plays the lottery has HOPE that they will be the ones who win. That even out of millions – they have HOPE that the money will transform their life and make it better. – and so – at that price point of $3, why not?

The majority of people that play these lotteries are from the middle and lower socio-economic classes and are striving to make better lives for themselves, hoping that the lottery will help get them there. As a society, we even advertise to the majority of the population in this manner, offering you, the consumer, product or service that will satisfy you – that your hopes and dreams will be fulfilled at the purchase of.

I mean isn’t it crazy, all you have to do is provide people with the HOPE of a prize, and that is enough to get millions of people interested enough to put down money they won’t receive back. People are willing to overlook IMPOSSIBLE odds, as long as they are guaranteed the slightest sliver of hope. We find that to be a very human thing. What do you think?

I like relating things to life – so let’s look at this observation about the dynamics of gambling and maybe apply it to common personal things in our lives.

Can you think of anything else in your life that might operate like the relationship many people have with the lottery? Maybe a dysfunctional relationship that you can’t quite let go of because each time or each fight, you are hoping it will be different and better, but it never has? Or maybe you’ve followed a career for the money, only come to find out – that the success you were promised and hoping towards is actually very unlikely; and those successful few you looked up to were the exceptions and not the rule?

Well enough of life coaching, right?

One of the reasons we came up with Free Play Lotto, is because we wanted to offer a softer solution to gambling, and the hope many put into lotteries and scratch-offs in hope that they win real money. We thought – if you are going to gamble, it might as well be free- and if you are going to lose, it might as well be nothing! And we think THAT is pretty cool.

Well, that’s all for now.

Here are a couple of interesting videos that dive a lot deeper into the psychology of gambling than what we discussed here. We hope you enjoy!

Here’s to you! We hope you have a great rest of the week! And remember, you can’t lose if you don’t pay!

Until next time!

– The Free Play Lotto Team!