The Psychology of Lottery
Lottery is a game in which players pay for tickets, select numbers, or have machines randomly spit them out, and win prizes if their selections match those of others. The practice originated in seventeenth-century Genoa, where it was used to award public works projects such as town fortifications and a city gate, but has since become a worldwide phenomenon. In modern times, state-run lotteries usually award a combination of cash and goods. The games’ profits are used to fund government services such as education and social welfare.
Lotteries were common in the Roman Empire, as exemplified by Nero’s love of them, and are also attested to throughout the Bible, from casting lots for Jesus’ garments after his Crucifixion to determining who would keep the estate of a dead person. However, the current lottery industry began in the nineteen-sixties, when growing awareness of all the money that could be made by gambling collided with a crisis in state funding. Thanks to a growing population, soaring inflation, and the cost of the Vietnam War, many states struggled to balance their budgets without raising taxes or cutting state-supported services.
Historically, lottery sales were relatively slow to grow and then rapidly decline, as the public became bored with the comparatively meager prize amounts and the long wait for the drawing. But innovations in the 1970s gave the industry a dramatic boost. Rather than offering a single draw for a grand prize, which could take weeks or months to process and announce, the new lottery games introduced instantaneous results, allowing sales to surge and profits to grow.
These games were marketed as a means of improving the quality of government services, such as education or elder care, or boosting economic development. But they were not, as is widely believed, a financial silver bullet that cured state deficits. Instead, the popularity of these games coincided with a steady erosion of economic security for working Americans. Income inequality widened, retirement and health-care benefits disappeared, and the promise that hard work and education would ensure a decent standard of living ceased to be true for the majority of the population.
As the lottery becomes a more and more popular form of recreation in America, some scholars have begun to examine its psychological origins. Specifically, they have tried to understand why people buy so many tickets. They have found that while lottery purchases can’t be explained by decision models based on expected value maximization, they are consistent with the theory that gamblers are risk-seekers who enjoy the adrenaline rush of winning and the fantasy of becoming wealthy.
Nonetheless, the most compelling argument in favor of legalizing the lottery is its ability to promote a narrowly focused service, such as education or public parks, while still raising significant revenue. This is the strategy that has been pursued by advocates in most states, who have reframed their arguments to make them less about gambling and more about a specific government service.