How to make two hundred dollars walking in the mall: about luck and lucky people

This article was written following a lecture I gave at Hav Tel Aviv, about the cognitive biases that stop us on the way to success. Among other things, I also talked in the lecture about framing (framing situations) and the way in which lucky people redefine the reality around them. I prefer not to upload the entire lecture to the website, but for the benefit of the regular readers who could not attend, I uploaded the following article to the blog, which focuses on one angle of the lecture.

Thanks to all the readers who came and participated in the small games and demos throughout the lecture!

Each of us has such a friend or acquaintance, fortunately. We can love him and admire him for his good fortune, or loathe the kindness the world shows him. In any case, it's hard to deny that wherever such lucky people go, opportunities jump into their laps: employers offer them jobs, beautiful women and handsome men peck their way and become their partners, and they sit next to a random person on the bus and discover that he is the expert doctor who can advise them on a problem that bothered them all their lives.

Where does luck come from? Some would say that this is a quality that we cannot measure, value or control. The famous contemporary British psychologist Richard Weisman does not share this opinion. He decided to conduct a series of scientific experiments to determine the origins of luck. For this he relied on one of the principles that guide scientists in the study of extraordinary natural phenomena: he chose to focus on the extreme cases.

This is a principle used in many studies that try to test phenomena that depend on a wide variety of factors, it is difficult to isolate one of them from all the others. Similarly, to learn about aging, we study children who age rapidly, and die in their teens from heart attacks. To learn about the HIV virus that causes AIDS, we study the few mutants in the human population that are immune to its effects. And to learn about luck, Weissman chose to focus on the two extreme ends of the luck bar: the lucky and the unlucky.

Weissman published ads in newspapers inviting people who considered themselves particularly unlucky or lucky to participate in a series of experiments. Four hundred people responded to the call, of all ages and professions. They included businessmen for whom luck summoned - again and again - opportunities for success. They included women who failed time and time again in their marital systems. The lucky ones were clearly happier than the unlucky ones, but neither of them recognized what their good or bad luck was based on. It was only after many years of experiments that Weissman was able to identify several key factors that formed the basis of good luck.

Identifying random opportunities

It is a well-known truth that opportunities for success almost fall from the sky on the heads of the lucky ones. Weissman believed that opportunities come equally to the lucky and the unlucky, but that the latter have more difficulty identifying them. In an attempt to verify the idea, he asked both groups to look through the magazine and report to him the number of pictures in the issue. The unlucky ones needed an average of two minutes to count all the pictures. The lucky ones, on the other hand, reached the correct number of pictures in just a few seconds. This result is not surprising considering that already on the second page of the magazine a half-page notice appeared, and it read in white Kiddush letters - "Stop counting - there are 43 pictures in this magazine."

entertaining? Not for the unlucky. We know that lucky people suffer from higher stress levels in their lives[1]. It's hard to blame them: they believe that the whole world is working against them. High stress levels evolved to help us escape from madmen, or deal with other violent situations. Because of this, stress hormones 'jump' the body's systems: they increase blood pressure, breathing rate and heart rate to bring more oxygen to the muscles at a faster rate[2]. An equally important effect is the reduction of the field of vision. Athletes who are in a state of stress, report a narrowing of the field of vision[3] to a complete focus on only one goal: the finish line.

A similar effect apparently worked on the minds of the unfortunate. They knew that the challenge they were thrown into was extremely difficult - how could it not be? They are unlucky! - and therefore their stress response was higher and more prolonged. Their field of vision narrowed and allowed them to concentrate only on the images they scanned - but at the same time prevented them from seeing the opportunities on the sides. It is not hard to believe that a similar effect also exists in real life, on both a psychological and physiological level. When we are goal-oriented, we miss the 'outside the box' ways that can bring us to the same goal - or help us achieve another, equally good goal.

One of the most well-known tests, often used to explain the natural narrowness of our peripheral field of vision. Did you manage to find out the number of times the players in white pass the ball between them?

To understand how much mental and visual rigidity can interfere with identifying and finding opportunities, Weissman added another ad near the center of the magazine: "Report to the researcher that you found this ad, and you'll win $250!" This time too, the unlucky ones missed the opportunity. They were too busy pursuing another goal. "They go to parties with the aim of finding their perfect partner, thus missing opportunities to find good friends. They search the newspapers with a determined decision to find a certain type of job ad, and as a result miss out on other types of jobs." Weisman wrote in an article published in the Skeptical Inquirer.

Creating opportunities

The lucky ones are not satisfied with opening their eyes and looking to the sides. They also create new opportunities through constant change and diversity in their living conditions. They choose to talk to new people at parties, take new paths to work, develop new hobbies or read newspapers they have never read before.

Why do these lifestyle changes help open up new opportunities? Think of a person looking for treasure on the beach using a metal detector. If he concentrates on a limited number of areas, he will initially find a number of treasures there, but after a while his luck will run out (along with the coins in the sand). But if he constantly expands his search area and spreads to new and unspoiled areas, he will find that the number of discovery cases immediately increases. He has created for himself a search path that invites new opportunities. And according to the words of the Babylonian Talmud, Alon Olarchik and Danny Sanderson - "A change of place, a change of luck."[4]

Dealing with difficulties

The following photo was published following the Olympics:

Originally published on the London Underground website

At first glance, it seems that it indicates the different nature of New Zealand and Australia, but the truth is that it is a worldwide phenomenon: athletes who win a bronze medal are happier than athletes who win a silver medal.

This is a surprising discovery at first, but there is a painful logic behind it. The athletes who won the silver medal, see before their eyes the big prize they missed. The athletes who won the bronze medal do not think about the gold at all - it is too far away from them. They are just happy that they managed to make it to the final three.

Similarly, when lucky people experience difficult or harmful events, they tend to maintain an optimistic picture of the event. To prove the idea, Weissman asked people in both groups to imagine that a robber entered the bank where they were waiting, fired one bullet - and hit them directly in the shoulder. The fortune tellers immediately interpreted the event as part of the same universal plan against them, and explained that the very fact that they were in the bank while the robber was breaking into it, was interpreted as horribly bad luck.

The lucky ones interpreted the situation differently. They claimed that the bullet could have hit their head, instead of their shoulder, and therefore they were very lucky to have survived. And as one of the lucky ones stated, "You might as well sell your story to the papers and make some money."

The lucky ones seem to live in an optimistic world precisely due to the fact that they independently understand how bad things could have been. In the words of the optimistic German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, they "live in the best of all possible worlds". This way of life saves them from the constant pressure experienced by lucky people, and gives them the self-confidence needed to continue creating new experiences for themselves - some of which will also yield a good return.

School for luck

Can people change their luck? This was the main question that faced me after reading Weissman's experiments and insights. It turns out that Weissman also thought about this point, and decided to establish a 'school for luck' for the unlucky ones who participated in his experiments. The students received lessons about the main factors of luck and explanations about their meanings, and acquired thinking and behavior techniques that helped them imitate the complex of behaviors and interpretations of lucky people. At the end of the crash course, Weissman released the participants back to their lives, but asked them to continue using the techniques they had learned for an entire month.

The results spoke for themselves. At the end of that month, eighty percent of the subjects defined themselves as happier, more satisfied with their lives and above all - luckier. Some have found new loves and jobs, or progressed in life thanks to… well, thanks to what appears to be pure luck.

Want to hire lucky people? Here is another way, not explicitly mentioned in the article.

personal experience

A week ago I decided to try Weissman's principles myself. I firmly informed my wife that we were going on vacation to London in two months, and I didn't care about the money. The woman refrained from protesting. A few days later I went to meet with a potential travel agent at the shopping center near my house. I was walking around the mall while talking on the cell phone with a friend I hadn't talked to in over a year, and suddenly I saw a folded sheet of paper on the floor. He picked it up to throw it in the trash - and out of it fell two greenish-gray bills of one hundred dollars each.

luck? Definitely. However, as a decent person, I decided to call the phone number that was listed on the paper folded around the bills, and inform them of the loss. It turned out that it was a travel agent from another company, whose package apparently fell from a sweet spot. The agent contacted me in a short time, full of thanks - and promised to arrange a 'good people' discount for us on the future trip.

Summary of the experience: not bad at all for a single day of testing. Two hundred unethical dollars, or a good feeling and a significant discount on a trip to London.

But maybe it was just luck?

[1] Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with healthy or unhealthy biological profiles?; Taylor et al; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003.

[2] Inequality: Of wealth and health; Else; New Scientist, 2012.

[3] Effects of life-event stress and hardiness on peripheral vision in a real-life stress situation; Rogers, Landers et al; Behavioral Medicine, 2003.

[4]http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94_%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9D_%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94_%D7%9E%D7%96%D7%9C

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