Members in the Media
From: NPR

How Does Sunshine Affect The Lottery?

NPR:

Social science research examines how the mood of gamblers can change the way they think about risk. New Yorkers buy more lottery tickets when the weather is good and when their sports teams win games.

Right. So Ross Otto, Stephen Fleming and Paul Glimcher recently hit upon an interesting way to test this idea. They looked at the propensity of New Yorkers to gamble based on the quality of the weather and the performance of local sports teams.

GREENE: Because good weather and your teams winning generally make you happier.

VEDANTAM: Exactly. By analyzing the sales of lottery tickets across 174 ZIP codes and correlating the results with the performance of football, baseball, basketball and hockey teams, the researchers find that New Yorkers, in real life, do indeed buy more lottery tickets when their teams wins compared to when their teams lose. Basically, when you’re in a good mood for some unrelated reason, you extrapolate that good mood to a sense of optimism when it comes to gambling.

Read the whole story: NPR

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