Are You a Lucky Person?

December 12, 2013

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When the jackpot rises to $400 million - where Mega Millions is now - I can't help myself: I have to buy a lottery ticket, even if I know the chances are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to one (or something like that).
Do people who buy lottery tickets think of themselves as luckier than others?
Yes and no.
Yes because by the very act of buying a ticket, you are making yourself luckier, even if it's by one miniscule fraction. But also by buying a ticket, you are admitting that well, you wish you had that kind of dough and you don't.
Richard Wiseman is a researcher in the U.K. who explores the idea of luck. In his fascinating 2003 book The Luck Factor, he devised an experiment to show how “lucky” and “unlucky” people behave.
In one, he taped a five-pound British note on the ground outside a coffee shop near his office. He asked his test subjects, Brenda and Martin, to meet someone involved in a research project at the cafe. Martin considered himself a lucky man. Brenda thought she was an unlucky person. The scheming professor put various people in the coffee shop including a “millionaire” who was to do exactly the same thing with Brenda as he would with Martin.
Can you guess what happened?
Martin spotted the money right away on the ground, picked it up, and walked into the coffee shop. He sat next to the “millionaire” and began chatting him up, even buying him a coffee with the extra money he found. They began a fruitful dialogue and discussed connecting again on possible projects.
Brenda, in the meantime, walked right past the free money, bought her coffee, and also sat down next to the millionaire. But she didn’t talk to him and he was instructed not to approach her first. So she left with no interaction and no extra money.
Imagine this was a real life scenario and you can easily see how one set of behaviors could lead to a lucky break and the other would lead to nothing. How many millionaires have you walked by and not said a word?
And then ask yourself: How many chances have you let pass by because you didn't grab it?

(Adapted from Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need to Know to Get Ahead)
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Betty Liu is the host of "In the Loop" and Editor-at-Large for Bloomberg Television. Her book Work Smarts is available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. Visit her website at www.betty-liu.com.

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