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Introduction
Humans’ propensity for flawed and irrational decisions finds manifestations in various social phenomena, including the popularity of lotteries. In his article titled “Why We Keep Playing the Lottery,” Adam Piore explores lottery games from the perspectives of evolutionary psychology and psychological anthropology. Based on the presented arguments’ credibility and applicability to daily experiences, this paper seeks to agree with Piore’s points regarding people’s predisposition to oversimplified odds assessments and decisions that cause emotional pleasure.
Source Summary
Using subject matter experts’ opinions, results of experimental research, and takeaways from a conversation with Rebecca Hargrove, the lottery industry’s veteran, Piore singles out various factors that make purchasing lottery tickets a pleasant experience. Among them is the human brain’s lack of exposure to situations that would require detailed assessments of low-probability events throughout its evolutionary history (Piore). Another contributor to lotteries’ financial feasibility is their ability to elicit positive emotions linked with dreams that lottery players would fulfill if they had enough money. Coupled with the tendency to avoid uncertainty and the positive activation of the emotional system by fantasies about winning, humans’ reliance on crude calculations of odds makes lottery gambling something attractive.
Another topic raised by Piore is that lottery corporations’ exceptional advertising skills and knowledge about the average consumer’s psychographic traits and reasoning-related weaknesses ensure lotteries’ continuous popularity. Keeping players hopeful by introducing smaller prizes with higher odds of winning and distracting them using themed tickets is extremely helpful in creating the demand for tickets (Piore). Lottery organizations profit from cognitive mistakes and the power of social comparison by creating an illusion of closeness to the prize in postcode lotteries and games based on guessing multi-digit winning numbers.
Response: Agreement and Disagreement
I agree with the article’s thesis concerning the existence of evolutionary contributors to individuals’ willingness to play lotteries. Firstly, the author’s findings come from external research and expert opinions, both of which are regarded as reliable sources globally (Piore). Secondly, aside from these successful appeals to ethos, the discussions of each hypothetical factor are logical and consistent. For instance, the argument from evolutionary history makes sense because situations in which physical survival is prioritized require quick and generally correct choices rather than time-consuming but the best possible decisions. When escaping predators, archaic humans would likely regard finding any safe place as an already successful strategy, and the existence of another location with a slightly increased chance of isolation from predators would not matter. The human brain is now capable of solving more complex tasks, but the intuitive and oversimplified categorization of probabilities as something possible or impossible probably supports its ability to conserve energy. Therefore, the source points to the evolutionary advantage of ignoring complex probabilities, which makes the overall argument successful.
Another reason to agree with Piore stems from the reported biases’ clear connections to almost every person’s experiences. For instance, based on Piore’s argument, fantasies about living a wealthy life and the related emotions are attractive enough to urge a person to purchase another lottery ticket. Indeed, for individuals in challenging financial circumstances, the knowledge that getting a large prize is not impossible might become the last resort if they assume that only a unique coincidence can make them richer. This perspective on the power of fantasizing also seems accurate because selling dreams has become a prominent marketing strategy that anyone has experienced. After the initial euphoria from purchasing even a high-quality product, consumers sometimes realize that they need the opportunity to establish connections with something that this product symbolizes rather than the item itself. Advertising campaigns with celebrities or images of a wealthy and happy life are effective in promoting impulse purchases. Lotteries simply take this universal principle of selling the unattainable dream to the next level by earning revenues from people’s belief in miracles.
One, however, might disagree with the article in terms of how it distributes the responsibility for unsuccessful gambling. The source positions the phenomenon of regular ticket purchasing as something that exists due to people’s flawed thinking rather than lottery corporations’ uninterrupted activities and limitless financial appetites (Piore). The disagreement could stem from the public’s willingness to punish those profiting from dreams that cannot come true. The request for the moral condemnation of lottery corporations, however, would not be valid in this case. Piore’s purpose involves reviewing the psychological aspects of gambling and factors that prompt people’s voluntary decisions that lottery companies then turn into financial gains. Moreover, the source’s actual practical value would be reduced if the author overemphasized lottery operators’ ethical deficiencies. Piore’s writing thoroughly explains thinking traps and mistakes that make lottery players ignore their almost non-existent chances of winning, which can increase readers’ awareness of their vulnerability to a large extent. Therefore, the author’s approach to prioritizing the involved themes can promote critical thinking and more careful self-observation with regards to odds assessments, which makes the article change-provoking.
Conclusion
In summary, the article effectively summarizes the psychology of believing in lotteries concerning research and the psychological effects that people encounter regularly. The source does not address lottery companies’ ethical integrity in a detailed manner and accentuates the average consumer’s thinking patterns and myopic decision-making. Nevertheless, it can teach the audience to spot manipulations and make well-thought and informed choices when it comes to low-probability outcomes requiring regular investments.
Work Cited
Piore, Adam. “Why We Keep Playing the Lottery: Blind to the Mathematical Odds, We Fall to the Marketing Gods.” Nautilus, Web.
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