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How to Win the Lottery (Happily)

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How to Win the Lottery (Happily)

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If you have won the lottery, or if you plan to do so, please keep reading this column. The information is vital not just to your happiness but also to the progress of social science.

You have a chance to dispel the notion of the curse of the lottery, which is blamed whenever a big winner ends up divorced, depressed, destitute or dead. Journalists like to explain that the curse is no mere legend — the futility of winning the jackpot has been demonstrated by actual scientists with jobs at accredited universities.

The evidence comes from an influential paper in 1978Link opens in a new window reporting that lottery winners were not any happier than their neighbors or more optimistic about the future. In fact, they weren’t any more optimistic about their future happiness than a group of people who had been in accidents that left them paralyzed.

Full article can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/science/how-to-win-the-lottery-happily.html?ref=science&_r=0Link opens in a new window