November 4, 2021 • 43 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Barbara Blatchley about her book “What are the Chances? Why We Believe in Luck.”
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an interview that
Robert conducted with a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob,
(00:26):
I was not here for this conversation. You recorded it
while I was out on vacation a while back. So
to tell me about the talk. What is this? Well,
Barbara came on the show to discuss her new book,
What Are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck. This
is UM publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently
available in hardback, get as an e book, an audio book,
(00:48):
So anyway you consume your your books, it's an option UM.
Barbara is a professor of psychology at Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia,
UM and her scholarly and UH teaching interests include of
physiological psychology, neuroscience research, statistics, psychology of learning, sensation and perception.
(01:10):
Also the biology of depression and UH and factors both
environmental and biological, influencing the development of the brain. UM
and of course, the book in question here, which is
a delightful read. I've very much enjoyed. It's just all
about about luck, getting into um various topics related to
luck that you might not even instantly realize are are
(01:31):
central to our understanding of it, such as randomness and
the difficulty in like, even contemplating randomness from a human perspective.
Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck as well
as how it relates to various uh mythologies and and
so forth. Sounds great, Let's jump right on in. Hi, Barbara,
(01:54):
can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, my name
is Barbara Blushley. I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience
at Agnes Scott College, and I've been there for about, oh,
this is going to be embarrassing forty years now. Your
book provides such an engrossing look at luck and randomness
and these various concepts that are all kind of interwoven
(02:16):
into the topic. Uh So, in a way, it's kind
of difficult to decide where to start first. I wouldn't
want to just ask you, well, what is luck, because
that is that's that entire answer is the entire length
of the book. But I thought it might start by
just asking how does luck seem to be connected to
the human unwillingness to accept randomness. Actually, that's a very
(02:39):
good question. I think luck is the word that we
assign to random and unpredictable events in the world. We
tend not to like things that are random and unpredictable.
They're very often interpreted as fearful or threatening. Randomness is
scary because it's unknowable, it's unpredictable. Um, it's unexpected. UH.
(03:04):
I was very fascinated to read a book by Nicholas Carlton,
who's a psychologist in Canada. UH. He writes that fear
of the unknown, the fear of not having the information
we need in order to be able to answer a question,
maybe the most fundamental, the most basic fear that we
(03:25):
have and underlies every other fear that we learn. We
are motivated, seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we
do that in a number of different ways. We can
we can do it by being curious, by going out
and trying to find the answer to the question. We
also do it this is very human. We do it
(03:47):
by labeling that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The
tendency to label things that we don't understand, I think
is another fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desired
control of that. Then if you can label it, then
you have some degree of control over it. Um. One
of the more interesting studies that I came across in
(04:09):
writing the book was a study done by uh Lieberman
and the whole slew of other people in two thousand
and seven. They were looking at their participants understanding emotions,
and they were doing this in an fMRI machine, So
they're scanning the brain to watch how it uh the
(04:31):
processes the information that's coming in. They showed their participants
a series of human faces expressing emotion. About of the
emotions were negative because that gets a really big response,
and the other were positive emotions. Or they show them
just a shape, and they asked them to first just
observe the image, don't do anything about it, don't label it,
(04:54):
don't say anything. And then they asked them to to
label that image. When they were just observed the human
faces with emotional expressions, it activated a part of the
brain called the amygdala, which is part of the emotion
processing system in the brain. When they labeled the emotion
the activity the amygdala went down. So it's almost as
(05:16):
if being able to apply a label to that thing
reduced the anxiety literally in the part of the brain
that is processing that emotional response, which I thought was
just super interesting. I did not expect that. So, loosely speaking,
like something unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know,
the the unexplained, the unexpected in life. Just by merely
(05:38):
being able to label it bad luck, you're kind of
reducing the the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes,
I think that's how they would have interpreted it. They
said that putting your feelings into words helped regulate the
negative emotions that that particular thing unexpected or a negative
(06:00):
emotional response from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to
other humans. We can spend a lot of our time
watching human faces to see what they're doing. So being
able to label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that
that negative emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying
(06:20):
language to these things. In the book, you outline four
different types of luck. Um, can you describe these four us?
Those four types of luck I came across in a
book by Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and
an author. In fact, he wrote one of my favorite
books of all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain.
(06:41):
Had nothing to do with luck, but just to mention
it because it's a really cool book. So he writes
about these four types of luck in his book, which
is uh Chase, Chance and Creativity, The Lucky Art of Novelty.
He's really writing about how luck played a role in
his own X paraments that he was doing in the lab,
(07:02):
and he details these four different kinds of luck. Each
type of luck builds on the type that came before.
So at the at the foundation of this is what
he called type one luck, which is what most of
us probably think about when we think about luck. It's
random chance. It's just an unexpected, random event that happens
to you. We don't see it coming, but there it is,
(07:25):
and we we wind up having to deal with it.
And the example I used in the book for type
one luck is walking into the casino in Las Vegas
and betting everything you have on the outcome of one
game and walking out a winner. That's type one luck.
That's just random, unexpected against the odds. Look type two
(07:47):
luck is a combination of randomness and what Austin called movement.
Um I think of it as persistence. Really, he uses
the example of a Charles Kettering, who's an American inventor,
who very famously said, but if you want to solve problems,
you have to be persistent. You have to keep moving,
(08:09):
you have to keep trying. Chances are you will stumble
on something when you least expected. I've never heard of
anyone stumbling on something sitting down. So Kettering was advocating
to be luckier, get up and move, get up and try.
And Type three luck is a combination then of randomness, persistence,
and preparation, and Austin uses the famous quote by Louis Pasteur.
(08:34):
Chance favors the prepared mind, so preparation helps you see
patterns in the events that happened to you that other
people who are less prepared might not see. And then
Type four luck combines randomness, persistence, preparation, and our own
unique personality, our own spin on what happens in the world.
And I used the story of Sarah Kesson's and Emily
(08:57):
Cole and their attempt to win the two thousand and
five wood Vale Transatlantic Rowing Race which just blows my mind.
I just cannot wrap my head around voluntarily getting in
a rowboat and trying to row across the Atlantic Ocean.
Just not not in my wheelhouse. So I got the
(09:21):
chance to talk with Sarah via email. UM. I think
she lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me
that she accidentally came across a book, so there's random
chance while she was waiting for an airplane to fly
home across the Atlantic, by the way, uh, and read
about the race and that was what got her interested
(09:42):
in it. She and her racing partner, Emily Cole, had
been on the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they
already were familiar with and prepared for racing long distances,
although nothing like what they were about to attempt. Both
thought that this race sounded like a challenge instead of
something you would avoid at all costs. Uh. And it
(10:04):
was right up there alley, and both of them prepared
like mad, persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an
ocean upon which they could practice, so they were practicing
on rivers and ponds and and things like that, so
they they embodied kind of all four aspects of luck.
They suffered, uh, capsize in the race, as did many
(10:27):
people because apparently this was just an ill fated race,
but they survived and tried it again. They entered again.
If you couldn't believe it after that, I don't think
I would go anywhere near a rowboat, but they did.
I love the various examples like this that you share
in the book, so you know, to illustrate these different
views and understandings of luck. UM. One that was particularly
(10:51):
I don't know, alarming, I guess you could say if
if one's not familiar with the story was that of
Joan Ginther. Can you tell us about Joan Ginther and
what her story reveals about luck? I can't. One of
the things I had the most fun with actually in
writing the book was finding these stories of lucky people.
And John ginther story was one of the most fun
for me because I teach statistics, so UH kind of
(11:14):
felt a kindred bond with Dr Ginther. She is a
retired professor of mathematics who won the lottery four times,
winning a total of I think twenty million dollars altogether. UM.
Her experience is a wonderful example of a streak in
a random event, winning the lottery is random. It's really, really,
(11:38):
really hard to predict whether you're going to or not,
whether or not the card that you've got to scratch
off lottery card that you've got is going to be
a winner or not. Um So, her experience winning the
lottery four times against all the odds and repeatedly was
really remarkable. She kind of embodies all four types of luck.
(12:02):
She was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning
the lottery. She's a math professor, so she probably knew.
She was persistent in that she kept trying even though
she knew what the odds were. She also benefited from
the fact that random events are not necessarily pattern less.
(12:24):
They do happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you
think about the stars in the night sky, you can
see patterns in the placement of those stars. In fact,
those patterns are so consistent that we give them names.
We've we've labeled the patterns that we see in the
night sky. So when something happens like this, when somebody
(12:46):
wins the lottery, for example, four times in a row,
we tend to think, well, that's not that's not fair,
it's not how the universe works, it creates uncertainty, and
that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we start looking for a
pattern predictability in that event. If we can find a pattern,
(13:09):
we can then understand that event better. And sometimes that
pattern we just say that's luck. That's an example of luck.
Some people insisted, however, that it couldn't be luck because
it was so unexpected, and that she must have cheated
in order to win. So there there's a whole bunch
of reporters who got attracted to this story and went
(13:32):
to try to see could they find out how she
cheated the system. For the life of me, I can't
figure out how she would have cheated unless she had
a level of control over the creation and distribution of
scratch off lottery cards. That is impossible, and that, as
far as I can tell, she did not have. UM
I just can't see how she cheated. I think she
(13:54):
just was the beneficiary of a streak in luck. And
more power to you, Joan. So I'm not going to run.
I'm not moved to run out and played the lottery
myself because because I know what the odds are as well.
But there you go, thank you. Now. One question I
(14:16):
came to mind as I was I was reading the book.
You know, is it is luck just something? Is it
just seemed like a universal concept for all human cultures?
Is it just something that that emerges alongside language? Is it?
Did you run anything across anything that even resembled a
culture without a tradition of luck? I did not. Um,
(14:38):
And this was another thing that I found fascinating. I
suppose it's common to all human cultures in that all
human cultures are created by humans, so we all share
a tendency in our cognition, in the way that we
leave the world. UM. I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman,
(14:59):
who wrote a book about luck as well. He said
that as far as he could tell that there, it
is common to all humans all over the world. Two
want to have control over the unexpected, and that often
becomes a tradition of luck and luckiness or lucky gods
or lucky shoes, are lucky whatever in the world. So,
(15:21):
if you ask a cognitive science researcher, these are folks
who study how humans think and what they think about this,
Is this a universal characteristic of the way humans think?
They probably would tell you yes, in that all humans
have the tendency to see patterns in random events, and
it's related to another tendency in the way that we think,
(15:45):
which is to look for an agents for whatever caused
an event to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent.
If you do something and I see you do it,
you are the agent. It's really easy for me to tell.
Sometimes you can't identify the agent, and that makes us nervous.
So searching for and needing an agent for any event
(16:08):
that happens is a pattern. It's a survival mechanism for
us humans. It goes hand in hand with our tendency
to interpret all patterns as having meaning and discounting randomness
because we can't see what caused it, so we tend
to just say, well, that didn't happen. There there must
be something causing this. If that event that happened is
(16:30):
beyond the capacity of humans to create, we start looking
for invisible superhuman agents. We refer to these agents very
often as gods and goddesses. They are divine, They have
control over things we don't have control over. They must
be the agent of whatever happened, and maybe if you
ask them, really, really nicely, they'll help you experience good
(16:53):
luck as well. I was a bit surprised at how
consistently we humans have insisted on and institutionalized the idea
of luck um as a force in the universe, as
something that makes things happen. I'm going to go out
on a on a limb here, uh, something that might
get me into trouble. I am not a cultural anthropologist.
(17:15):
I'm interested in this, but I'm not an expert by
any means. But what struck me was that most cultures
have an explanation of luck and how it influences us.
And most of these explanations involves the divine in some way,
shape or form. That seems to be the common underlying factor.
Humans like there to be an agent in charge, and
(17:36):
very often that agent is a god. Now there's a
whole section of the book where you you look to
two different cultures and you go back in history and
look at different ideas. I was. I was a little
surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you describe
how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck? After say,
going to see the cave paintings at Lasco or elsewhere,
(18:02):
not just photographs of them. He's on my personal bucket list.
I would love to do that. I'm told that the
photographs of them just don't do them justice. There's an
entire group of researchers who study the paintings that humans
have left on the walls of the caves they lived in. Um.
They're trying to understand the apparently fundamental human need to
(18:26):
paint on the walls. If you're a parent and you
have children that paint on the walls, it may just
be wired into us. I don't know. There are a
number of explanations as to why we do this. I
personally liked the Neanderthal adolescent idea that maybe they're tagging
the caves. Some researchers think that they were simply recording
the hallucinations that they had, because there are some common
(18:48):
patterns in the haucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have.
They're called in toptic images. They are created by the
machinery of the eye itself. So that's why they're so common,
and that's why all humans, if you're gonna experience them,
probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a
floaty um your visual field, something that appears like it's
(19:11):
floating across. That's probably debris in the eyeball itself. UM.
So that's an example of one of these UH and
topic images. The other explanation had to do with our
ancestors pleading to the universe for good luck. UH. It
might be related. I've often wondered too our modern urge
(19:32):
to display the head of something we've killed on the
living room all. So maybe they were painting the results
of the last hunt UH and hoping that that would
be rewarded by a successful hunt the next time. They
have found that a number of these paintings seemed to
be done over and over and over again in the
(19:53):
same spot. So there was some aspect of that spot
in the cave that was lucky. They had really good
luck with the hunt after they painted on that spot,
so they went back the next time and painted again.
It could just be bragging about what you killed the
last time, but it could also be a ritual attempt
to ask the random universe for success the next time.
(20:16):
You go out with your spear and try to bring
that out a really mammoth seems difficult. Okay, that's fascinating. UM.
Now in the h in this section where you you
deal with different cultural traditions, and I must say you
get into examples from say, you know, Greek and Roman culture,
and and very various other examples. So I highly recommend
(20:40):
folks pick up the book and uh and read it.
But I wanted to ask about one in particular. You
outline three models of luck and Chinese traditions. There's I
believe ming yun, which is one's own personal destiny on
thin faithful coincidence, and bow ying, a cosmic accounting of
one's life. And you discuss how the easier you know,
(21:00):
not not stand alone but interwoven. And this just got
me thinking, do do you think this is relatable to
sort of modern Western views um on luck? That you
know that we may have several different or perhaps even
contradictory views of how luck might work in our lives. Interesting? Uh,
(21:21):
I do think that we are often contradictory and what
we think in what we think about a lot of things,
not just luck. I think we're a contrary species. Just basically,
since the book came out, I can have been asked
do I believe in luck more times than I can count?
Which is completely expected. I wrote a book about luck,
(21:42):
So yeah, I guess that means people are reading it. Uh.
I'm not sure that the answer is as binary as
the question is. If you ask me do I believe
in luck? I would say yes and no, which is
a really wishy washy answer. I realized most of the time,
I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work, persistence,
(22:03):
in preparation. But if I hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm
going to say something along the lines of Wow, that
was really lucky. I think lots of people feel that way.
They share that view when when I can see what
I did to create an outcome, when I can see
how I've influenced that outcome. When I have control, and
(22:26):
I know I have control, I don't need luck. I
don't need it as an explanation for what happened. But
when I don't have control, then I need luck, And
then I believe. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed to admit that
I own a pair of lucky shoes. They became lucky
when they got paired randomly with success. I wore them
(22:49):
to a job interview and I got the I got
the job. Um, I do not think it was the
shoes that got me the job. That would be creepy
and weird. I think it was my preper ration, my
what I brought to the opportunity, that sort of thing.
But those shoes are still lucky for me, and I
still haven't. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of, Like
(23:09):
I was, you bring up you know, various you know,
lucky items and charms and amulets and all, and so
it got to me got made looking around my own
house and recognize them some things that are I guess,
you know, technically lucky charms of some you know, or
lucky mementos. They're supposed to be items of luck. Uh.
And then I'll tend to think of them not as
as some sort of an amulet or anything. I'll think
(23:32):
of like a reminder of something good. But then again,
it's just kind of linguistically dancing around, like the idea
of it being a lucky item. Like, you know, we're
just kind of arguing about terminology at this point. I
think it comes down to semantics after a while. Lots
and lots of people carry carry lucky charms. Um, I
(23:53):
don't see anything particularly wrong with it. I like my
lucky shoes. They're very nice shoes. So I'm not going
to worry about it too much. Is it contradictory? Probably,
but I'm okay with them. Now. Another question that came
to mind. Do you see a link between divination practices
and the need to create randomness? I think I've seen
(24:15):
this discuss before, in terms of ancient bone casting rituals,
or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of
humanity's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I actually
had not heard that. I was I was intrigued when
you said that. I think human beings are bad at
(24:37):
creating randomness. If you ask people to create a random display,
most of the time we can't do it. Um. This
is actually a question that philosophers and mathematicians argue about um,
and I'm perfectly willing to let them have added. I
don't have a good answer for that, but I think
(24:57):
we're bad generating or creating randomness because we seem to
be wired to see patterns and to interpret them as meaningful.
So if you ask me to abandon that and to
create a random eventum or series of events, it's usually
(25:18):
not random. There's usually a pattern in it. And that's
because of the way that the brain is designed to
interpret events in the world. So I think what you're
saying is that you've come across evidence that, in an
attempt to introduce randomness, people have used casting bones or
or the each ng or something like that to create
(25:43):
random because we're so bad at it. Is that what
you were that is? I think that's basically the ideas
I've I've read it. I want to say, maybe it
was Julian Jaynes who wrote about it at some point.
I'll have to go look that up. Now. Outside of
any kind of alaly attempted to understand randomness, I enjoy
a board games and role playing games such as Dungeons
(26:05):
and Dragons, which, to varying degrees, uses tables and dice
to generate randomness that is useful in sort of generating
an adventure or you know, some sort of a situation
for players to engage in UM. And some systems even
have like a luck mechanic. They'll be like a luck
like some sort of numerical rating for luck that uh
(26:28):
somehow factored into everything. UM. I don't imagine any of
this reveals anything about our perceptions of luck, though, does it?
I'm not sure. I think I think we're we're fascinated
by random events. Um, they can be scary, but they're interesting.
They will grab your attention. Um, how else can you
(26:50):
explain horror movies and how popular they are. I'm not
really familiar with games that I don't play Dungeons and Dragons,
so I don't really know the example you're using. But
I think that since games that we play reflect the
lives that we live, and many people think of luck
as an element in the universe that cannon does affect us,
(27:14):
that having some lux ri of an aspect of the
game would be completely human. I just didn't realize it
was built into the game. I did not know that.
Thank thank In your book, you write that quote luckiness
could be described as a creature of our imagination. If
(27:36):
we could imagine something worse happening, and if that's something
worse is close at hand, it might have happened recently.
We had a choice of actions that lead to the
possible something worse, or we deserve that outcome, we say
we were lucky. It all seems to hinge on being
able to imagine something worse. I found that that that
really interesting as well, and and this makes complete sense,
(27:58):
but it also makes me wonder think people who were
inclined to engage in catastrophic thinking uh and worst case scenarios,
are they more inclined to assume luck not Probability played
a role in say, um, you know, not being bitten
by a shark on a recent vacation. I like that
example makes me think. I had a I had a
(28:19):
student in my statistics class last week, as a matter
of fact, who asked me if something that I said
in class was true to what they're listening. That's that's good.
I had been talking about the Monte Carlo fallacy in
statistics class and explaining why it's a fallacy. The Monte
Carlo fallacy is another example of how we usually misinterpret probability.
(28:44):
It's the belief that an event will be, for example,
less likely to happen if it follows a series of
similar events, or that a past event can change the
probability of a future one. It's named after a famous
streak in the events that happened at the casino at
Monte Carlo Um. The player on the roulette wheel betting
(29:06):
black one time after time after time, the little marble
kept landing on black, and as it did that the
other players at the table started to bet more and
more heavily that the next spin would be read as
if the probability of the marble landing on black was
decreasing as the streak went on, and the probability that
(29:26):
it would land on red was increasing. We're talking about
independent events here. Each spin of the wheel is independent
of every other spin of the wheel, unless the wheel
is rigged, in which case you shouldn't be playing there. Um,
So what happened on the last spin has no effect
at all on what happens on the next spin. It's
(29:47):
fifty that it will land on black every single spin,
unless the universe is keeping score. Uh. And besides, there's
been too many landing on black events, so the next
one has to be red. Um, and I don't think
it is. Then what happened the last time has no
effect on what happens the next time. My student looks
(30:08):
shocked by this, so I asked her why, and she
said that she had always believed, like the players at
the table had believed that, to use your example of
being bitten by a shark, um, that the probability of
being bitten by a shark if she goes into the
ocean would go up as the number of days that
no one had been bitten by a shark also increased.
(30:31):
Don't work that way, um, And we had an interesting
discussion about how it does not work that way. UM.
She came to class the next time kind of reconciled
to this. So, yeah, my work here is done. So UM,
I think part of the reason we do this, and
I do it myself, I have done it myself, is
(30:53):
that we're wired to think that the worst thing can happen,
and there's a survival component to that. If you prepare
yourself for the worst thing that can possibly happen, then
then you're ready for that should it happen, and if
it doesn't happen, you're still okay because you were prepared.
So the problem is that overestimating the probability of a
(31:13):
negative event produces anxiety, and anxiety can really change how
you process what happens next. So I think I may
have wandered down the garden path here, but I do
think that, uh, we do tend to think catastrophically, uh,
(31:35):
in order to prepare for catastrophe. UH, and that that
is related to how lucky or unlucky we feel ourselves
to be. Believe ourselves to be so. Speaking of of anxiety,
how does stress and superstition, superstition about luck and bad luck,
how do these seem to be linked together. Well, stress
(31:57):
and anxiety can reinforce catastrophic thinking. Anxiety tends to narrow
what psychologists call the spotlight of attention. If you're anxious,
that spotlight is really, really narrow. You're focused on just
that one little thing, and you're missing you're actually not
seeing or hearing the other things that are happening. If
(32:18):
you're relaxed and happy, that spotlight is wide and you're
taking in more information. So if you get stressed out
in anxious and you're focused on that catastrophic thing and
only that catastrophic thing, it can make it more and
more difficult to cope, and it can make you more
(32:39):
likely to see the negative and less likely to see
the positive. Superstitions develop as a means of deflecting, usually
something negative or fearful, uh to keep that from happening.
There was just very interesting study done on the superstition
of knocking on wood um, which developed by out of
(33:03):
the Celtic culture. The belief that trees in the forest
were inhabited by spirits that could mess with you if
they felt like it, um especially if you came upon
them unexpectedly. Produced this this myth or the superstition of
knocking on wood. So you walked by the tree and
(33:23):
knock on it to let them know that you're here,
so that they they'll leave you alone. They won't be
surprised by your sudden appearance. It keeps bad luck away
from us. So in this study, they asked people to
describe their level of stress. How stressed are you? And
then they gave them a difficult task to do, and
(33:44):
they asked them as they were doing it, how strong
is the urge to knock on wood? For example? And uh.
What they found was that the more stressed they were,
the more they reported the urge to knock on wood.
Not not very many of them did it, because they're
in a psychology experiment and the psychologist is watching them.
(34:05):
They don't want to look superstitious. But they did report
that they felt the urged more strongly when they were
stressed out. So carrying lucky charms produces a similar effect.
Having a lucky ritual or a lucky pen, or even
lucky shoes can make us feel more confident in the
(34:25):
face of the unknown and the unpredictable. Having that with
you reduces anxiety, and when you're less anxious, you perform better.
So you know, success breeds success. So I have to
admit that previously I did not know what the origin
of knocking on wood was as a sort of good
luck practice. It's something that I I would catch myself
(34:47):
doing often if i'm, you know, engaging in a conversation
with somebody like I don't think I would ever catch
myself doing it like by myself, but uh, you know,
someone would say something they knock on wood. I pick
up on it, and I guess the barrier to entry
is very low in it. You just have to have
something wooden around to knock on my desk. Now, traditions
(35:09):
of luck like like this and others that they can
be fun and they're they're often a part of one's culture.
But what do you think it's the best way to
explain these traditions to to younger people, to children. I
often wonder about this with my own son, where I
might explain a tradition or even introduce him to one,
But then I feel like I have to really couch
it all in sort of the fiction or the superstition
(35:31):
of the thing, so that he doesn't take it too seriously. Um,
but then I am I taking too much of the
magic out of it. I don't know what do you
think is the right approach? Oh, well, I will tell
you right off the bat. But I don't have children,
so I've never been faced with this. Probably not the
person to ask. I do think that you probably. I
(35:53):
don't think you would destroy the magic if you explained
it to a child. I think children are remarkably will
to believe in magic. I mean, who but a child
would think that tying a red towel around their shoulders
would give them the power of flight. That's that's magic. Um.
So I don't think that you're going to, by being realistic,
(36:16):
explain explain away the magic. I think the magic is
there regardless. There's plenty of adult people who see magic
as perfectly possible as well. I don't really have any
good advice for how to how to explain this to
your child because I don't have any. I have three
step children, but they were pretty much beyond that stage
(36:39):
by the time I came around. So yeah, I guess
I'll just have to have to keep wrestling with it. Here.
Basically you mentioned the red cape is actually a similar
situation where my son knows that red is often considered
a you know, a good luck color, and so they'll
be we'll be playing a game or something and he'll say,
(36:59):
oh wait, let me go get a red shirt on
for this part, you know, to get really geared up. Yeah,
and so I, you know, when he does that, I
don't want to say no, don't do that, you know,
don't engage in superstition. But I also want to explain
to him what, you know, this is not actually going
to have an impact on what happens. But yeah, but
then it keep explaining, Yeah, just keep explaining. Okay. Now
(37:23):
another question, this is something you get into in the book. Um.
Are people who believe in luck generally happier? Well, that's
an easy one, yes. Um. Psychology used to think of
luck as being a sign that you were focused in
the wrong direction, that there was a sign of not
processing things appropriately, But lots of studies more recently have
(37:44):
shown that people who believe themselves to be lucky people
are more hopeful, they're happier, they perform better. It even
affects something called executive function, which is the function of
the frontal lobe, how you pay attention to the world,
how you UM. There are several aspects to executive function.
(38:06):
One is paying attention UH, and all of those aspects
can be affected by belief in luck, because I think
because you're happier, you're just a happier person, and that
change is how you work, how you function. UM. There's
a study that showed in two thousand and nineteen that
less happy people people who were unhappy had a stronger
(38:28):
belief in external luck, that it was out there, not
them that was lucky, but that it was a force
out there in the universe that dictated your fate, whether
it was good or bad. They're blaming luck for what
happens to them, and that tends to make you feel
as though you don't have personal agency, that what you
(38:52):
do isn't going to have an effect. UM diminishes their
sense of purpose and their overall happiness. So seeing luck
as external to you might be associated with being more unhappy,
but seeing luck as personal, as something that's an aspect
(39:13):
of you, tends to be associated with people being happier. UH.
It's a I suppose a variant of optimism and optimism
always makes us feel better. It breeds, it breeds hope,
it breeds self acceptance, uh, connection with other people and
with positive experiences. So people who see themselves as lucky
(39:38):
may be more willing to try something new, to be
inspired to go out and try to be a helper
out in the world. Two help other people because they
feel that life has been kind to them, and so
they can then extend that to the rest of us. So, yeah,
(39:59):
people who see themselves as lucky are generally speaking happier.
So in that case, can we learn to be lucky?
Can we make that change in our in our lives? Yeah.
The same psychologist in the UK that I was talking about,
Richard Wiseman, has been studying luck and uh other factors
that are related to it for the last twenty years.
(40:20):
He used to run I don't know if he's still
running it or not, but he used to run a
luck school where he would teach you how to be lucky.
I don't know if it's still operating, and he had
details in his book. He has a book out called
The lux actor Um and he details in that book
several ways several things you can do to try to
improve your your feeling of personal luckiness. Try to be
(40:43):
more open to new experiences, be more social, make more
connections with other human beings. Pay attention to your intuition,
your gut feeling about something. UM, expect good fortune as
opposed to acting disaster. Uh, and develop your resiliency, your
(41:04):
ability to come back even from a disaster, come back
from that. Still looking for the positive in life. I
think the most practical bit of advice that he had
was to begin a gratitude diary to track the positive
in your life. So every day you would write down
(41:27):
a positive thing that happened to you. It makes you
focus on the positive more. It tends to make us happier. Uh.
That widens our attentional spotlight, That makes us more likely
to notice random things that come up, et cetera. So,
as I said, success breed success. So if you can
(41:47):
do that, that might be the first step in learning
how to be a luckier person. Excellent. Well, there's some
some some words of wisdom there. Remind everybody that the
book again is what are the chances why we believe
in luck? And yeah we we We didn't even get
into I think half of the material you discussed in
there there's there's stuff in there about about curses, the
(42:09):
curse of the Mummy. Um, it's certainly a lot of
neuroscientific information that's worth reading as well, so I encourage
everyone to go out there and pick it up. Thanks
for taking time out of your day to chat with me, Barbara.
Thank you. This was fun all right. Well, thanks once
more to Barbara for taking time out of her day
(42:29):
to chat with me about the book. The book, again
is what are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck?
Currently available and I think pretty much any format you
might be desiring, and that is out from Columbia University Press.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
us in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday,
(42:52):
listener Mail on Monday, and on Friday's we do a
little uh, a little bit of content called Weird House Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most of the serious
concerns and just discuss a weird film. Huge thanks as
always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
(43:12):
for the future, or just to say hi, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(43:33):
listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an interview that
Robert conducted with a professor of psychology named Barbara Bletchley. Uh. Rob,
(00:26):
I was not here for this conversation. You recorded it
while I was out on vacation a while back. So
to tell me about the talk. What is this? Well,
Barbara came on the show to discuss her new book,
What Are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck. This
is UM publication from Columbia University Press, and it's currently
available in hardback, get as an e book, an audio book,
(00:48):
So anyway you consume your your books, it's an option UM.
Barbara is a professor of psychology at Agnes Scott College, Indicator, Georgia,
UM and her scholarly and UH teaching interests include of
physiological psychology, neuroscience research, statistics, psychology of learning, sensation and perception.
(01:10):
Also the biology of depression and UH and factors both
environmental and biological, influencing the development of the brain. UM
and of course, the book in question here, which is
a delightful read. I've very much enjoyed. It's just all
about about luck, getting into um various topics related to
luck that you might not even instantly realize are are
(01:31):
central to our understanding of it, such as randomness and
the difficulty in like, even contemplating randomness from a human perspective.
Barbara also gets into the neuroscience of luck as well
as how it relates to various uh mythologies and and
so forth. Sounds great, Let's jump right on in. Hi, Barbara,
(01:54):
can you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, my name
is Barbara Blushley. I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience
at Agnes Scott College, and I've been there for about, oh,
this is going to be embarrassing forty years now. Your
book provides such an engrossing look at luck and randomness
and these various concepts that are all kind of interwoven
(02:16):
into the topic. Uh So, in a way, it's kind
of difficult to decide where to start first. I wouldn't
want to just ask you, well, what is luck, because
that is that's that entire answer is the entire length
of the book. But I thought it might start by
just asking how does luck seem to be connected to
the human unwillingness to accept randomness. Actually, that's a very
(02:39):
good question. I think luck is the word that we
assign to random and unpredictable events in the world. We
tend not to like things that are random and unpredictable.
They're very often interpreted as fearful or threatening. Randomness is
scary because it's unknowable, it's unpredictable. Um, it's unexpected. UH.
(03:04):
I was very fascinated to read a book by Nicholas Carlton,
who's a psychologist in Canada. UH. He writes that fear
of the unknown, the fear of not having the information
we need in order to be able to answer a question,
maybe the most fundamental, the most basic fear that we
(03:25):
have and underlies every other fear that we learn. We
are motivated, seriously motivated to reduce that uncertainty, and we
do that in a number of different ways. We can
we can do it by being curious, by going out
and trying to find the answer to the question. We
also do it this is very human. We do it
(03:47):
by labeling that thing that we're afraid of. UM. The
tendency to label things that we don't understand, I think
is another fundamental human characteristic. It stems from our desired
control of that. Then if you can label it, then
you have some degree of control over it. Um. One
of the more interesting studies that I came across in
(04:09):
writing the book was a study done by uh Lieberman
and the whole slew of other people in two thousand
and seven. They were looking at their participants understanding emotions,
and they were doing this in an fMRI machine, So
they're scanning the brain to watch how it uh the
(04:31):
processes the information that's coming in. They showed their participants
a series of human faces expressing emotion. About of the
emotions were negative because that gets a really big response,
and the other were positive emotions. Or they show them
just a shape, and they asked them to first just
observe the image, don't do anything about it, don't label it,
(04:54):
don't say anything. And then they asked them to to
label that image. When they were just observed the human
faces with emotional expressions, it activated a part of the
brain called the amygdala, which is part of the emotion
processing system in the brain. When they labeled the emotion
the activity the amygdala went down. So it's almost as
(05:16):
if being able to apply a label to that thing
reduced the anxiety literally in the part of the brain
that is processing that emotional response, which I thought was
just super interesting. I did not expect that. So, loosely speaking,
like something unexpected happens. Uh, there's the the you know,
the the unexplained, the unexpected in life. Just by merely
(05:38):
being able to label it bad luck, you're kind of
reducing the the emotional um impact of the incident. Yes,
I think that's how they would have interpreted it. They
said that putting your feelings into words helped regulate the
negative emotions that that particular thing unexpected or a negative
(06:00):
emotional response from someone else. Humans are tremendously important to
other humans. We can spend a lot of our time
watching human faces to see what they're doing. So being
able to label that negative emotion reduced the anxiety that
that negative emotion provoked. Fascinating. Now, speaking of of applying
(06:20):
language to these things. In the book, you outline four
different types of luck. Um, can you describe these four us?
Those four types of luck I came across in a
book by Dr James Austin, who is a neurologist and
an author. In fact, he wrote one of my favorite
books of all time. Um, it's called Zen and the Brain.
(06:41):
Had nothing to do with luck, but just to mention
it because it's a really cool book. So he writes
about these four types of luck in his book, which
is uh Chase, Chance and Creativity, The Lucky Art of Novelty.
He's really writing about how luck played a role in
his own X paraments that he was doing in the lab,
(07:02):
and he details these four different kinds of luck. Each
type of luck builds on the type that came before.
So at the at the foundation of this is what
he called type one luck, which is what most of
us probably think about when we think about luck. It's
random chance. It's just an unexpected, random event that happens
to you. We don't see it coming, but there it is,
(07:25):
and we we wind up having to deal with it.
And the example I used in the book for type
one luck is walking into the casino in Las Vegas
and betting everything you have on the outcome of one
game and walking out a winner. That's type one luck.
That's just random, unexpected against the odds. Look type two
(07:47):
luck is a combination of randomness and what Austin called movement.
Um I think of it as persistence. Really, he uses
the example of a Charles Kettering, who's an American inventor,
who very famously said, but if you want to solve problems,
you have to be persistent. You have to keep moving,
(08:09):
you have to keep trying. Chances are you will stumble
on something when you least expected. I've never heard of
anyone stumbling on something sitting down. So Kettering was advocating
to be luckier, get up and move, get up and try.
And Type three luck is a combination then of randomness, persistence,
and preparation, and Austin uses the famous quote by Louis Pasteur.
(08:34):
Chance favors the prepared mind, so preparation helps you see
patterns in the events that happened to you that other
people who are less prepared might not see. And then
Type four luck combines randomness, persistence, preparation, and our own
unique personality, our own spin on what happens in the world.
And I used the story of Sarah Kesson's and Emily
(08:57):
Cole and their attempt to win the two thousand and
five wood Vale Transatlantic Rowing Race which just blows my mind.
I just cannot wrap my head around voluntarily getting in
a rowboat and trying to row across the Atlantic Ocean.
Just not not in my wheelhouse. So I got the
(09:21):
chance to talk with Sarah via email. UM. I think
she lives in New Zealand now. Um. She told me
that she accidentally came across a book, so there's random
chance while she was waiting for an airplane to fly
home across the Atlantic, by the way, uh, and read
about the race and that was what got her interested
(09:42):
in it. She and her racing partner, Emily Cole, had
been on the Purdue University women's skulling team, so they
already were familiar with and prepared for racing long distances,
although nothing like what they were about to attempt. Both
thought that this race sounded like a challenge instead of
something you would avoid at all costs. Uh. And it
(10:04):
was right up there alley, and both of them prepared
like mad, persisting despite the fact that Indiana lacks an
ocean upon which they could practice, so they were practicing
on rivers and ponds and and things like that, so
they they embodied kind of all four aspects of luck.
They suffered, uh, capsize in the race, as did many
(10:27):
people because apparently this was just an ill fated race,
but they survived and tried it again. They entered again.
If you couldn't believe it after that, I don't think
I would go anywhere near a rowboat, but they did.
I love the various examples like this that you share
in the book, so you know, to illustrate these different
views and understandings of luck. UM. One that was particularly
(10:51):
I don't know, alarming, I guess you could say if
if one's not familiar with the story was that of
Joan Ginther. Can you tell us about Joan Ginther and
what her story reveals about luck? I can't. One of
the things I had the most fun with actually in
writing the book was finding these stories of lucky people.
And John ginther story was one of the most fun
for me because I teach statistics, so UH kind of
(11:14):
felt a kindred bond with Dr Ginther. She is a
retired professor of mathematics who won the lottery four times,
winning a total of I think twenty million dollars altogether. UM.
Her experience is a wonderful example of a streak in
a random event, winning the lottery is random. It's really, really,
(11:38):
really hard to predict whether you're going to or not,
whether or not the card that you've got to scratch
off lottery card that you've got is going to be
a winner or not. Um So, her experience winning the
lottery four times against all the odds and repeatedly was
really remarkable. She kind of embodies all four types of luck.
(12:02):
She was definitely prepared to understand the chances of winning
the lottery. She's a math professor, so she probably knew.
She was persistent in that she kept trying even though
she knew what the odds were. She also benefited from
the fact that random events are not necessarily pattern less.
(12:24):
They do happen in streaks with apparent patterns. If you
think about the stars in the night sky, you can
see patterns in the placement of those stars. In fact,
those patterns are so consistent that we give them names.
We've we've labeled the patterns that we see in the
night sky. So when something happens like this, when somebody
(12:46):
wins the lottery, for example, four times in a row,
we tend to think, well, that's not that's not fair,
it's not how the universe works, it creates uncertainty, and
that uncertainty is unpleasant. So we start looking for a
pattern predictability in that event. If we can find a pattern,
(13:09):
we can then understand that event better. And sometimes that
pattern we just say that's luck. That's an example of luck.
Some people insisted, however, that it couldn't be luck because
it was so unexpected, and that she must have cheated
in order to win. So there there's a whole bunch
of reporters who got attracted to this story and went
(13:32):
to try to see could they find out how she
cheated the system. For the life of me, I can't
figure out how she would have cheated unless she had
a level of control over the creation and distribution of
scratch off lottery cards. That is impossible, and that, as
far as I can tell, she did not have. UM
I just can't see how she cheated. I think she
(13:54):
just was the beneficiary of a streak in luck. And
more power to you, Joan. So I'm not going to run.
I'm not moved to run out and played the lottery
myself because because I know what the odds are as well.
But there you go, thank you. Now. One question I
(14:16):
came to mind as I was I was reading the book.
You know, is it is luck just something? Is it
just seemed like a universal concept for all human cultures?
Is it just something that that emerges alongside language? Is it?
Did you run anything across anything that even resembled a
culture without a tradition of luck? I did not. Um,
(14:38):
And this was another thing that I found fascinating. I
suppose it's common to all human cultures in that all
human cultures are created by humans, so we all share
a tendency in our cognition, in the way that we
leave the world. UM. I saw an interview with Richard Wiseman,
(14:59):
who wrote a book about luck as well. He said
that as far as he could tell that there, it
is common to all humans all over the world. Two
want to have control over the unexpected, and that often
becomes a tradition of luck and luckiness or lucky gods
or lucky shoes, are lucky whatever in the world. So,
(15:21):
if you ask a cognitive science researcher, these are folks
who study how humans think and what they think about this,
Is this a universal characteristic of the way humans think?
They probably would tell you yes, in that all humans
have the tendency to see patterns in random events, and
it's related to another tendency in the way that we think,
(15:45):
which is to look for an agents for whatever caused
an event to happen. Sometimes you can easily identify the agent.
If you do something and I see you do it,
you are the agent. It's really easy for me to tell.
Sometimes you can't identify the agent, and that makes us nervous.
So searching for and needing an agent for any event
(16:08):
that happens is a pattern. It's a survival mechanism for
us humans. It goes hand in hand with our tendency
to interpret all patterns as having meaning and discounting randomness
because we can't see what caused it, so we tend
to just say, well, that didn't happen. There there must
be something causing this. If that event that happened is
(16:30):
beyond the capacity of humans to create, we start looking
for invisible superhuman agents. We refer to these agents very
often as gods and goddesses. They are divine, They have
control over things we don't have control over. They must
be the agent of whatever happened, and maybe if you
ask them, really, really nicely, they'll help you experience good
(16:53):
luck as well. I was a bit surprised at how
consistently we humans have insisted on and institutionalized the idea
of luck um as a force in the universe, as
something that makes things happen. I'm going to go out
on a on a limb here, uh, something that might
get me into trouble. I am not a cultural anthropologist.
(17:15):
I'm interested in this, but I'm not an expert by
any means. But what struck me was that most cultures
have an explanation of luck and how it influences us.
And most of these explanations involves the divine in some way,
shape or form. That seems to be the common underlying factor.
Humans like there to be an agent in charge, and
(17:36):
very often that agent is a god. Now there's a
whole section of the book where you you look to
two different cultures and you go back in history and
look at different ideas. I was. I was a little
surprised when prehistoric cave paintings came up. Can you describe
how prehistoric cave paintings may relate to luck? After say,
going to see the cave paintings at Lasco or elsewhere,
(18:02):
not just photographs of them. He's on my personal bucket list.
I would love to do that. I'm told that the
photographs of them just don't do them justice. There's an
entire group of researchers who study the paintings that humans
have left on the walls of the caves they lived in. Um.
They're trying to understand the apparently fundamental human need to
(18:26):
paint on the walls. If you're a parent and you
have children that paint on the walls, it may just
be wired into us. I don't know. There are a
number of explanations as to why we do this. I
personally liked the Neanderthal adolescent idea that maybe they're tagging
the caves. Some researchers think that they were simply recording
the hallucinations that they had, because there are some common
(18:48):
patterns in the haucinations visual hallucinations that human beings have.
They're called in toptic images. They are created by the
machinery of the eye itself. So that's why they're so common,
and that's why all humans, if you're gonna experience them,
probably experienced the same ones. Have you ever seen a
floaty um your visual field, something that appears like it's
(19:11):
floating across. That's probably debris in the eyeball itself. UM.
So that's an example of one of these UH and
topic images. The other explanation had to do with our
ancestors pleading to the universe for good luck. UH. It
might be related. I've often wondered too our modern urge
(19:32):
to display the head of something we've killed on the
living room all. So maybe they were painting the results
of the last hunt UH and hoping that that would
be rewarded by a successful hunt the next time. They
have found that a number of these paintings seemed to
be done over and over and over again in the
(19:53):
same spot. So there was some aspect of that spot
in the cave that was lucky. They had really good
luck with the hunt after they painted on that spot,
so they went back the next time and painted again.
It could just be bragging about what you killed the
last time, but it could also be a ritual attempt
to ask the random universe for success the next time.
(20:16):
You go out with your spear and try to bring
that out a really mammoth seems difficult. Okay, that's fascinating. UM.
Now in the h in this section where you you
deal with different cultural traditions, and I must say you
get into examples from say, you know, Greek and Roman culture,
and and very various other examples. So I highly recommend
(20:40):
folks pick up the book and uh and read it.
But I wanted to ask about one in particular. You
outline three models of luck and Chinese traditions. There's I
believe ming yun, which is one's own personal destiny on
thin faithful coincidence, and bow ying, a cosmic accounting of
one's life. And you discuss how the easier you know,
(21:00):
not not stand alone but interwoven. And this just got
me thinking, do do you think this is relatable to
sort of modern Western views um on luck? That you
know that we may have several different or perhaps even
contradictory views of how luck might work in our lives. Interesting? Uh,
(21:21):
I do think that we are often contradictory and what
we think in what we think about a lot of things,
not just luck. I think we're a contrary species. Just basically,
since the book came out, I can have been asked
do I believe in luck more times than I can count?
Which is completely expected. I wrote a book about luck,
(21:42):
So yeah, I guess that means people are reading it. Uh.
I'm not sure that the answer is as binary as
the question is. If you ask me do I believe
in luck? I would say yes and no, which is
a really wishy washy answer. I realized most of the time,
I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work, persistence,
(22:03):
in preparation. But if I hit the lottery tomorrow, I'm
going to say something along the lines of Wow, that
was really lucky. I think lots of people feel that way.
They share that view when when I can see what
I did to create an outcome, when I can see
how I've influenced that outcome. When I have control, and
(22:26):
I know I have control, I don't need luck. I
don't need it as an explanation for what happened. But
when I don't have control, then I need luck, And
then I believe. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed to admit that
I own a pair of lucky shoes. They became lucky
when they got paired randomly with success. I wore them
(22:49):
to a job interview and I got the I got
the job. Um, I do not think it was the
shoes that got me the job. That would be creepy
and weird. I think it was my preper ration, my
what I brought to the opportunity, that sort of thing.
But those shoes are still lucky for me, and I
still haven't. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think of, Like
(23:09):
I was, you bring up you know, various you know,
lucky items and charms and amulets and all, and so
it got to me got made looking around my own
house and recognize them some things that are I guess,
you know, technically lucky charms of some you know, or
lucky mementos. They're supposed to be items of luck. Uh.
And then I'll tend to think of them not as
as some sort of an amulet or anything. I'll think
(23:32):
of like a reminder of something good. But then again,
it's just kind of linguistically dancing around, like the idea
of it being a lucky item. Like, you know, we're
just kind of arguing about terminology at this point. I
think it comes down to semantics after a while. Lots
and lots of people carry carry lucky charms. Um, I
(23:53):
don't see anything particularly wrong with it. I like my
lucky shoes. They're very nice shoes. So I'm not going
to worry about it too much. Is it contradictory? Probably,
but I'm okay with them. Now. Another question that came
to mind. Do you see a link between divination practices
and the need to create randomness? I think I've seen
(24:15):
this discuss before, in terms of ancient bone casting rituals,
or the or the eaching means of stepping outside of
humanity's inherent inability to grasp or produce randomness. I actually
had not heard that. I was I was intrigued when
you said that. I think human beings are bad at
(24:37):
creating randomness. If you ask people to create a random display,
most of the time we can't do it. Um. This
is actually a question that philosophers and mathematicians argue about um,
and I'm perfectly willing to let them have added. I
don't have a good answer for that, but I think
(24:57):
we're bad generating or creating randomness because we seem to
be wired to see patterns and to interpret them as meaningful.
So if you ask me to abandon that and to
create a random eventum or series of events, it's usually
(25:18):
not random. There's usually a pattern in it. And that's
because of the way that the brain is designed to
interpret events in the world. So I think what you're
saying is that you've come across evidence that, in an
attempt to introduce randomness, people have used casting bones or
or the each ng or something like that to create
(25:43):
random because we're so bad at it. Is that what
you were that is? I think that's basically the ideas
I've I've read it. I want to say, maybe it
was Julian Jaynes who wrote about it at some point.
I'll have to go look that up. Now. Outside of
any kind of alaly attempted to understand randomness, I enjoy
a board games and role playing games such as Dungeons
(26:05):
and Dragons, which, to varying degrees, uses tables and dice
to generate randomness that is useful in sort of generating
an adventure or you know, some sort of a situation
for players to engage in UM. And some systems even
have like a luck mechanic. They'll be like a luck
like some sort of numerical rating for luck that uh
(26:28):
somehow factored into everything. UM. I don't imagine any of
this reveals anything about our perceptions of luck, though, does it?
I'm not sure. I think I think we're we're fascinated
by random events. Um, they can be scary, but they're interesting.
They will grab your attention. Um, how else can you
(26:50):
explain horror movies and how popular they are. I'm not
really familiar with games that I don't play Dungeons and Dragons,
so I don't really know the example you're using. But
I think that since games that we play reflect the
lives that we live, and many people think of luck
as an element in the universe that cannon does affect us,
(27:14):
that having some lux ri of an aspect of the
game would be completely human. I just didn't realize it
was built into the game. I did not know that.
Thank thank In your book, you write that quote luckiness
could be described as a creature of our imagination. If
(27:36):
we could imagine something worse happening, and if that's something
worse is close at hand, it might have happened recently.
We had a choice of actions that lead to the
possible something worse, or we deserve that outcome, we say
we were lucky. It all seems to hinge on being
able to imagine something worse. I found that that that
really interesting as well, and and this makes complete sense,
(27:58):
but it also makes me wonder think people who were
inclined to engage in catastrophic thinking uh and worst case scenarios,
are they more inclined to assume luck not Probability played
a role in say, um, you know, not being bitten
by a shark on a recent vacation. I like that
example makes me think. I had a I had a
(28:19):
student in my statistics class last week, as a matter
of fact, who asked me if something that I said
in class was true to what they're listening. That's that's good.
I had been talking about the Monte Carlo fallacy in
statistics class and explaining why it's a fallacy. The Monte
Carlo fallacy is another example of how we usually misinterpret probability.
(28:44):
It's the belief that an event will be, for example,
less likely to happen if it follows a series of
similar events, or that a past event can change the
probability of a future one. It's named after a famous
streak in the events that happened at the casino at
Monte Carlo Um. The player on the roulette wheel betting
(29:06):
black one time after time after time, the little marble
kept landing on black, and as it did that the
other players at the table started to bet more and
more heavily that the next spin would be read as
if the probability of the marble landing on black was
decreasing as the streak went on, and the probability that
(29:26):
it would land on red was increasing. We're talking about
independent events here. Each spin of the wheel is independent
of every other spin of the wheel, unless the wheel
is rigged, in which case you shouldn't be playing there. Um,
So what happened on the last spin has no effect
at all on what happens on the next spin. It's
(29:47):
fifty that it will land on black every single spin,
unless the universe is keeping score. Uh. And besides, there's
been too many landing on black events, so the next
one has to be red. Um, and I don't think
it is. Then what happened the last time has no
effect on what happens the next time. My student looks
(30:08):
shocked by this, so I asked her why, and she
said that she had always believed, like the players at
the table had believed that, to use your example of
being bitten by a shark, um, that the probability of
being bitten by a shark if she goes into the
ocean would go up as the number of days that
no one had been bitten by a shark also increased.
(30:31):
Don't work that way, um, And we had an interesting
discussion about how it does not work that way. UM.
She came to class the next time kind of reconciled
to this. So, yeah, my work here is done. So UM,
I think part of the reason we do this, and
I do it myself, I have done it myself, is
(30:53):
that we're wired to think that the worst thing can happen,
and there's a survival component to that. If you prepare
yourself for the worst thing that can possibly happen, then
then you're ready for that should it happen, and if
it doesn't happen, you're still okay because you were prepared.
So the problem is that overestimating the probability of a
(31:13):
negative event produces anxiety, and anxiety can really change how
you process what happens next. So I think I may
have wandered down the garden path here, but I do
think that, uh, we do tend to think catastrophically, uh,
(31:35):
in order to prepare for catastrophe. UH, and that that
is related to how lucky or unlucky we feel ourselves
to be. Believe ourselves to be so. Speaking of of anxiety,
how does stress and superstition, superstition about luck and bad luck,
how do these seem to be linked together. Well, stress
(31:57):
and anxiety can reinforce catastrophic thinking. Anxiety tends to narrow
what psychologists call the spotlight of attention. If you're anxious,
that spotlight is really, really narrow. You're focused on just
that one little thing, and you're missing you're actually not
seeing or hearing the other things that are happening. If
(32:18):
you're relaxed and happy, that spotlight is wide and you're
taking in more information. So if you get stressed out
in anxious and you're focused on that catastrophic thing and
only that catastrophic thing, it can make it more and
more difficult to cope, and it can make you more
(32:39):
likely to see the negative and less likely to see
the positive. Superstitions develop as a means of deflecting, usually
something negative or fearful, uh to keep that from happening.
There was just very interesting study done on the superstition
of knocking on wood um, which developed by out of
(33:03):
the Celtic culture. The belief that trees in the forest
were inhabited by spirits that could mess with you if
they felt like it, um especially if you came upon
them unexpectedly. Produced this this myth or the superstition of
knocking on wood. So you walked by the tree and
(33:23):
knock on it to let them know that you're here,
so that they they'll leave you alone. They won't be
surprised by your sudden appearance. It keeps bad luck away
from us. So in this study, they asked people to
describe their level of stress. How stressed are you? And
then they gave them a difficult task to do, and
(33:44):
they asked them as they were doing it, how strong
is the urge to knock on wood? For example? And uh.
What they found was that the more stressed they were,
the more they reported the urge to knock on wood.
Not not very many of them did it, because they're
in a psychology experiment and the psychologist is watching them.
(34:05):
They don't want to look superstitious. But they did report
that they felt the urged more strongly when they were
stressed out. So carrying lucky charms produces a similar effect.
Having a lucky ritual or a lucky pen, or even
lucky shoes can make us feel more confident in the
(34:25):
face of the unknown and the unpredictable. Having that with
you reduces anxiety, and when you're less anxious, you perform better.
So you know, success breeds success. So I have to
admit that previously I did not know what the origin
of knocking on wood was as a sort of good
luck practice. It's something that I I would catch myself
(34:47):
doing often if i'm, you know, engaging in a conversation
with somebody like I don't think I would ever catch
myself doing it like by myself, but uh, you know,
someone would say something they knock on wood. I pick
up on it, and I guess the barrier to entry
is very low in it. You just have to have
something wooden around to knock on my desk. Now, traditions
(35:09):
of luck like like this and others that they can
be fun and they're they're often a part of one's culture.
But what do you think it's the best way to
explain these traditions to to younger people, to children. I
often wonder about this with my own son, where I
might explain a tradition or even introduce him to one,
But then I feel like I have to really couch
it all in sort of the fiction or the superstition
(35:31):
of the thing, so that he doesn't take it too seriously. Um,
but then I am I taking too much of the
magic out of it. I don't know what do you
think is the right approach? Oh, well, I will tell
you right off the bat. But I don't have children,
so I've never been faced with this. Probably not the
person to ask. I do think that you probably. I
(35:53):
don't think you would destroy the magic if you explained
it to a child. I think children are remarkably will
to believe in magic. I mean, who but a child
would think that tying a red towel around their shoulders
would give them the power of flight. That's that's magic. Um.
So I don't think that you're going to, by being realistic,
(36:16):
explain explain away the magic. I think the magic is
there regardless. There's plenty of adult people who see magic
as perfectly possible as well. I don't really have any
good advice for how to how to explain this to
your child because I don't have any. I have three
step children, but they were pretty much beyond that stage
(36:39):
by the time I came around. So yeah, I guess
I'll just have to have to keep wrestling with it. Here.
Basically you mentioned the red cape is actually a similar
situation where my son knows that red is often considered
a you know, a good luck color, and so they'll
be we'll be playing a game or something and he'll say,
(36:59):
oh wait, let me go get a red shirt on
for this part, you know, to get really geared up. Yeah,
and so I, you know, when he does that, I
don't want to say no, don't do that, you know,
don't engage in superstition. But I also want to explain
to him what, you know, this is not actually going
to have an impact on what happens. But yeah, but
then it keep explaining, Yeah, just keep explaining. Okay. Now
(37:23):
another question, this is something you get into in the book. Um.
Are people who believe in luck generally happier? Well, that's
an easy one, yes. Um. Psychology used to think of
luck as being a sign that you were focused in
the wrong direction, that there was a sign of not
processing things appropriately, But lots of studies more recently have
(37:44):
shown that people who believe themselves to be lucky people
are more hopeful, they're happier, they perform better. It even
affects something called executive function, which is the function of
the frontal lobe, how you pay attention to the world,
how you UM. There are several aspects to executive function.
(38:06):
One is paying attention UH, and all of those aspects
can be affected by belief in luck, because I think
because you're happier, you're just a happier person, and that
change is how you work, how you function. UM. There's
a study that showed in two thousand and nineteen that
less happy people people who were unhappy had a stronger
(38:28):
belief in external luck, that it was out there, not
them that was lucky, but that it was a force
out there in the universe that dictated your fate, whether
it was good or bad. They're blaming luck for what
happens to them, and that tends to make you feel
as though you don't have personal agency, that what you
(38:52):
do isn't going to have an effect. UM diminishes their
sense of purpose and their overall happiness. So seeing luck
as external to you might be associated with being more unhappy,
but seeing luck as personal, as something that's an aspect
(39:13):
of you, tends to be associated with people being happier. UH.
It's a I suppose a variant of optimism and optimism
always makes us feel better. It breeds, it breeds hope,
it breeds self acceptance, uh, connection with other people and
with positive experiences. So people who see themselves as lucky
(39:38):
may be more willing to try something new, to be
inspired to go out and try to be a helper
out in the world. Two help other people because they
feel that life has been kind to them, and so
they can then extend that to the rest of us. So, yeah,
(39:59):
people who see themselves as lucky are generally speaking happier.
So in that case, can we learn to be lucky?
Can we make that change in our in our lives? Yeah.
The same psychologist in the UK that I was talking about,
Richard Wiseman, has been studying luck and uh other factors
that are related to it for the last twenty years.
(40:20):
He used to run I don't know if he's still
running it or not, but he used to run a
luck school where he would teach you how to be lucky.
I don't know if it's still operating, and he had
details in his book. He has a book out called
The lux actor Um and he details in that book
several ways several things you can do to try to
improve your your feeling of personal luckiness. Try to be
(40:43):
more open to new experiences, be more social, make more
connections with other human beings. Pay attention to your intuition,
your gut feeling about something. UM, expect good fortune as
opposed to acting disaster. Uh, and develop your resiliency, your
(41:04):
ability to come back even from a disaster, come back
from that. Still looking for the positive in life. I
think the most practical bit of advice that he had
was to begin a gratitude diary to track the positive
in your life. So every day you would write down
(41:27):
a positive thing that happened to you. It makes you
focus on the positive more. It tends to make us happier. Uh.
That widens our attentional spotlight, That makes us more likely
to notice random things that come up, et cetera. So,
as I said, success breed success. So if you can
(41:47):
do that, that might be the first step in learning
how to be a luckier person. Excellent. Well, there's some
some some words of wisdom there. Remind everybody that the
book again is what are the chances why we believe
in luck? And yeah we we We didn't even get
into I think half of the material you discussed in
there there's there's stuff in there about about curses, the
(42:09):
curse of the Mummy. Um, it's certainly a lot of
neuroscientific information that's worth reading as well, so I encourage
everyone to go out there and pick it up. Thanks
for taking time out of your day to chat with me, Barbara.
Thank you. This was fun all right. Well, thanks once
more to Barbara for taking time out of her day
(42:29):
to chat with me about the book. The book, again
is what are the Chances Why We Believe in Luck?
Currently available and I think pretty much any format you
might be desiring, and that is out from Columbia University Press.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
us in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday,
(42:52):
listener Mail on Monday, and on Friday's we do a
little uh, a little bit of content called Weird House Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most of the serious
concerns and just discuss a weird film. Huge thanks as
always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
(43:12):
for the future, or just to say hi, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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