Self-serving judgments about winning the lottery

Although myths and stereotypes about lottery winners tend to be negative (e.g., winners become extravagant), people continue to spend billions of dollars buying lottery tickets in the hope of winning. The authors applied findings from the self-enhancement literature to understand this paradox. Eighty college students received class credit for their participation, in which they read a scenario that asked them to imagine that they, or a target other, had won a lottery. Participants' responses to a 34-item questionnaire displayed a self-serving bias, such that changes to the self were expected to be more positive than changes to the other. For several items, this effect was moderated by the participant's gender. The present research indicates that the pervasive tendency to display self-serving biases can apply to future-oriented processing, an under-researched topic.