Luck and such

Scientific American has a fascinating article on luck and whether people who consider themselves lucky really are more gifted, statistically, than others, or whether the whole thing is in their heads. The answer, says skpetic Michael Shermer, is a bit of both: people who consider themselves lucky tend to be more outgoing and tend to view setbacks as opportunities, not outright routs.

As a person who considers himself luckier than most, I found myself nodding along as I read this. Throughout my life, I've had my fair share of things happen that might have simply meant the end of my dreams: as a child, I was diagnosed with a genetic condition that might have limited me to a life of inactivity; after High School, financial conditions precluded me going to UC Berkeley; following graduation from Cal, I quickly found out that my chosen profession, teaching High School, was anathema to me; after working for a year and a half at a website I adored, I was laid off (along with 70+ others, but still). At any of these points, I could have very easily thrown up my hands in despair and sunk into petulant self-pity.

But the heart-condition turned out to be an opportunity to learn about genetics and public speaking; my two years at a Junior College gave me the opportunity to study in London for a semester and rediscover my wanderlust and my inspiration; the teaching position provided an excellent background for going to teach in Japan for six years; and the death of Ask Jeeves for Kids led directly to my position at the City of Oakland, where I got to build eleven computer labs throughout the city, setting me up for the systems admin job I'm loving so much right now.

So, was I lucky? Yes! But did these opportunities have something to do with my aberrantly optimistic brain chemistry? Hell, yes!

I'm not naive, nor am I a blithe pollyanna, but man, I am just one fundamentally happy SOB. Yes, I get sad, heartbroken, even, and no, I'm not a bundle of laughs or the life of the party all the time, but on average? I'm definitely happier than I really have much right to be....

Or to put it another way, I'm as happy as the rest of you at the very least deserve to be. That's pretty damn lucky.

As Luck Would Have It

Are some people really luckier than others, or is it all in their heads? Both

By Michael Shermer

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease that attacks motor neurons until muscle weakness, atrophy and paralysis lead inexorably to death. Victims of this monstrous malady could be forgiven for feeling unlucky.

How, then, can we explain the attitude of the disease's namesake, baseball great Lou Gehrig? He told a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium: "For the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth." The Iron Horse then recounted his many blessings and fortunes, a list twice punctuated with "I'm lucky" and "That's something."

Clearly, luck is a state of mind. Is it more than that? To explore this question scientifically, experimental psychologist Richard Wiseman created a "luck lab" at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Wiseman began by testing whether those who believe they are lucky are actually more likely to win the lottery. He recruited 700 subjects who had intended to purchase lottery tickets to complete his luck questionnaire, which is a self-report scale that measures whether people consider themselves to be lucky or unlucky. Although lucky people were twice as confident as the unlucky ones that they would win the lottery, there was no difference in winnings.

Wiseman then gave subjects a standardized "life satisfaction" scale, which asks individuals to rank themselves on how satisfied they are with their family life, personal life, financial situation, health and career. The results were striking. "Lucky people are far more satisfied with all areas of their lives than unlucky or neutral people," Wiseman reveals in his charming and insightful book, The Luck Factor (Miramax Books, 2003). Does this satisfied state of mind translate into actual life outcomes that someone might call lucky? It does. Here's how.

Lucky people expect good things to happen.

Wiseman gave subjects the "big five" personality scale, which measures "agreeableness," "conscientiousness," "extroversion," "neuroticism" and "openness." Although there were no differences between lucky and unlucky people on agreeableness and conscientiousness, Wiseman found significant differences for extroversion, neuroticism and openness.

Lucky people score significantly higher than unlucky people on extroversion. "There are three ways in which lucky people's extroversion significantly increases the likelihood of their having a lucky chance encounter," Wiseman explains: "meeting a large number of people, being a 'social magnet' and keeping in contact with people." Lucky people, for example, smile twice as often and engage in more eye contact than unlucky people do, which leads to more social encounters, which generates more opportunities.

The neuroticism dimension measures how anxious or relaxed someone is, and Wiseman found that the lucky ones were half as anxious as the unlucky ones--that is, "because lucky people tend to be more relaxed than most, they are more likely to notice chance opportunities, even when they are not expecting them." In one experiment, Wiseman had volunteers count the number of photographs in a newspaper. Lucky subjects were more likely to notice on page two the half-page ad with the message in large bold type: STOP COUNTING--THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER.

Wiseman discovered that lucky people also score significantly higher in openness than unlucky people do. "Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives.... They don't tend to be bound by convention and they like the notion of unpredictability," he notes. As such, lucky people travel more, encounter novel prospects and welcome unique opportunities.

Expectation also plays a role in luck. Lucky people expect good things to happen, and when they do they embrace them. But even in the face of adversity, lucky people turn bad breaks into good fortune. Consider the example set by one of the longest ALS sufferers in history, Stephen W. Hawking, who writes: "I was lucky to have chosen to work in theoretical physics, because that was one of the few areas in which my condition would not be a serious handicap." Unable to move and confined to a wheelchair, Hawking has capitalized on his fate by using it as a chance to transform our understanding of the universe, which he has. That's something.