Who likes to buy lottery tickets more

Who is more likely to buy lottery tickets , the rich or the poor ? You might think that rich people have a big budget and would prefer to spend a small amount of money on lottery tickets . Poor people , on the other hand , are so short of money that they can't wait to break a dollar in half . In fact , the opposite are true . The poorer people are , the more likely they are to buy lottery tickets . Economists have long observed this phenomenon : the less money you have , or the more you lose , the more you are likely to take bigger risks . Economists Kahneman and Tversky once produced a study of " utility at the end of the day , " which found that in the last race of the day , more people bet on the horse least likely to win . At the end of the day , those who lose red-eye are eager to make a comeback at the last chance , . So they tend to place their bets on the odds-on (least likely to win ) favourites . We call this all-or-nothing behavior " lottery thinking , " which is also a kind of " poor man's thinking " caused by lack of resources . They think saving money is a waste of time because they don't have enough money anyway , . So they just buy lottery tickets and gamble . So these people will sacrifice their precious real money to buy lottery tickets in exchange for emotional hope . The reason why people buy lottery tickets is because of a special mechanism in our brain , means that making money really feels good , and imagining it feels even better . We have a special physiological machine in our brains that is speeded up more by profit expectations than by actual profits . The more we are short of money , the more we expect and desire this . And it's not just lottery tickets . When we watch sports games , we will find a similar phenomenon . When the trailing team is running out of time , the football players will shoot long distances from the goal frequently . Basketball players take half-court shots in desperation before the final buzzer . Football players throw a " Slam Dunk " passes / passed at the end of the game . In other words , the more one sees a losing team , the more he or she looks for a winning miracle . This kind of " lottery thinking " may be a human instinct . Biologists have discovered that when animals lack food , water and shelter , they create a " negative energy budget " that makes it impossible for them to find steady , subsistence income . What they really need is a lottery hit . Animals in desperate situations , therefore , tend to have more variable harvests . Although this increases the risk of getting nothing , it is also the most feasible way to replenish the energy that is running out . In an experiment conducted by the biologist Thomas Kaleck , yellow-eyed rushes were given two choices : a fixed number of kernels of a plate ; On the other hand , there may be twice as many kernels on the plate , or there may be none at all . Birds that had just eaten were more likely to choose the " sure " option , while hungry birds flew to the plate where the kernels were uncertain without hesitation . The same is true of human evolution . When survival was at stake , our ancestors could only survive if they were willing to take more risks . When food was scarce , for example , early humans might have taken the risk of hunting large , fierce animals , either to get enough to eat or to die at the hands of predators . Conservative compromises , such as gathering wild fruits , did not guarantee survival .