3. Illusions of Control

Ever play the lottery? I'll admit that I buy tickets when the jackpot gets to nine figures, an interesting phenomenon in and of itself: as if $100 million would be life-altering, but $75 million isn't worth my effort.

Rationally speaking, it's hard to explain why anyone ever buys lottery tickets. But buy them we do, and part of the reason lies with another of our feel-good strategies: illusions of control. We convince ourselves that the randomness of life doesn't apply to us. Others may be unable to manage their own destinies, but somehow we think we can.

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer ran a study in which she either gave people a raffle ticket or let them choose one. When she then tried to buy the tickets back, those who had been allowed to select their own held out for four times as much money as those who were simply handed a ticket.

Just putting thought into, for example, which lotto numbers to play is enough to make us more optimistic–as if our intellect were so profound that it somehow gives us better odds than all those idiots with lousy numbers.

Illusions of control also explain why, even after being reminded that divorce rates hover at 50 percent, respondents in one study by the late Ziva Kunda, a psychologist at Canada's University of Waterloo, estimated that their own marriage had only a 20 percent probability of dissolving. Or why, in a recent survey on the real estate website Zillow.com, half of homeowners said their house had held its value or even appreciated during a year when nationwide sale prices dropped 9 percent. Or why we're able to assure ourselves that we will escape the documented side effects of a given medical treatment–you know, the ones that are muttered in hurried tones at the end of pharmaceutical commercials.

 

4. Basking in Reflected Glory

People are social animals. We spend much of our lives seeking out and managing bonds with others. It should come as no surprise, then, that when we're trying to feel good about ourselves, we frequently call to mind our more illustrious associations, basking in their reflected glory. If you don't believe me, Google "claim to fame." You'll find a variety of websites on which posters can tout their great-great-grandmother's affair with General Custer or celebrate a chance golf outing with Alice Cooper.

Sports fans are awash in reflected glory. A study by Robert Cialdini, a psychologist at Arizona State University, has found that college students are more likely to wear their school insignia to class on a Monday following a football victory than they are following a loss. In a second study, Cialdini and colleagues reported that while 32 percent of students use the pronoun "we" in talking about a victory by their school's team, only 18 percent use "we" in talking about a loss.

The "we effect" is most pronounced when people need an ego boost. In yet another Cialdini study, respondents were asked to complete a survey about the student body on their campus. Half of the participants, selected at random, were given positive feedback ("you did really well compared to the average student"). The other half received negative feedback ("you did really poorly"). In subsequent discussions about their school's victorious football team, the tendency to use "we" was higher among the students who presumably needed pumping up: 40 percent for those who believed they had failed the survey, compared with 24 percent for those who believed they had aced it.

There's a reason why those big foam fingers sold at football stadiums never say "They're #1."

 

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

 

 

This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Tufts Magazine.