Chance as foe
From an evolutionary perspective, the ability to control events and
to steer them in the desired direction is obviously conducive to
survival. Generally speaking, one may gain more by attempting to in-
fluence an outcome than by passively submitting to the vicissitudes of
fortune. Despite one's best efforts, however, limitations on personal
ability sometimes make failure more probable than success. It is in
these cases that one may especially benefit from the greater potential
for good luck that is presented by a smaller sample. For example, al-
though the stronger of two closely matched teams is always some-
what more likely to win, the LLN suggests that the weaker team has
a greater chance of prevailing in a single game playoff than in a
seven game series.
However, our results provide converging evidence that such poten-
tial benefits of chance are not fully appreciated. Instead, people have a
biased attitude toward luck. Participants are not oblivious to the LLN,
and correctly associate small samples with greater chance fluctuation.
Importantly, however, they also associate small samples more with
bad luck than with good luck. They also indicate that they distrust
luck and believe that they are less lucky than the average person
(although Study 3 suggests that their biased view of chance extends
to people other than the self). Finally, the findings also demonstrate
an asymmetric view of the relation between luck and control. If people
believe that luck is truly random, they should also believe that good
luck, as well as bad luck, will increase as control is diminished. Instead,
participants believe that when control is surrendered, bad luck
increases, but good luck actually tends to decrease.
