Chance, Luck, & Destiny by Peter Dickinson

In one study, he asked people who identified as luck and as unlucky to read a newspaper. Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England, has done a number of studies to figure out what distinguishes a lucky person from an unlucky one. Luck doesn’t just “happen,” even for people who consider themselves lucky.

“ “As both a scientist and a person, I do believe in luck.” Lucky Streaks

But this new understanding doesn’t change how Sun feels about luck overall-”As both a scientist and a person, I do believe in luck, that it is something I cannot manipulate or operate on. “Our study shows that our brains are probably smarter than we previously have thought, in that they are able to automatically pick up some very subtle yet important statistical structures in the environment,” he says. Neurons prefer alternating patterns-it’s the brain’s way of “regressing to the mean,” to correct for patterns that seem statistically unlikely. Our neurons detect these patterns naturally and pay special attention to their timing, Sun says. “A major function of the human brain is to deal with the uncertainty in the real world in order to find regularities,” says Yanlong Sun, a professor of microbial pathogenesis and immunology at Texas A&M College of Medicine and one of the study authors. This is called the “gambler’s fallacy,” and, according to a study published earlier this month in PNAS, our brains may be seeking out these sorts of patterns. You just flipped four heads in a row, so the next one has to be tails, right? Wrong-the odds of flipping heads or tails is still 50/50, exactly the same as it has been every other time.

Many of these studies have found that what a person might perceive as “luck” has more to do with psychology than probability “luck” is actually just her own positive attitude that keeps her open to new opportunities or perceiving patterns in random acts of chance. Researchers across various disciplines have attempted to decode whether there’s an actual measurable aspect to what we understand as luck.

Finding money on the street may seem like a lucky break, but it might be more accurate to thank yourself.

Chance, Luck, & Destiny by Peter Dickinson