How your brain decides between knowledge and ignorance
We have a 'thirst for knowledge' but sometime 'ignorance is bliss', so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time?
Jun 25, 2018
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We have a 'thirst for knowledge' but sometime 'ignorance is bliss', so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time?
Jun 25, 2018
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1242
A pair of researchers, one with the University of Bonn, the other Harvard University, has found that altruism may not make people as happy as prior studies have suggested. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National ...
Would you be more willing to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus if you could participate in a lottery for cash and prizes? The answer was surprisingly no, according to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers ...
Jul 2, 2021
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New Curtin research has found that contrary to the general perception that lotteries products such as 'scratchies' and lotto tickets are safe forms of gambling, people who only gamble using these products can experience gambling-related ...
Jun 4, 2020
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(Medical Xpress)—Youngsters who receive instant lottery tickets as a gift tend to begin gambling earlier in life—a possible risk factor for more severe gambling disorders later, Yale School of Medicine researchers report ...
Sep 24, 2012
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More of us than ever are stuck indoors, whether we are working at home, self-isolating, or socially distancing from other households. Long periods of isolation are already impacting many people's mental health and will continue ...
Oct 9, 2020
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Fifty secondary school children will debate the question 'If young people had more choice and control over the money spent on youth services, would they set up traditional youth centres?' Recent research at the University ...
Nov 4, 2011
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Girls are more than twice as likely to experience emotional difficulties as boys, while boys are significantly more likely to experience behavioural problems, UCL research has revealed.
Jan 11, 2018
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Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. This is the first time the causal role of frontal and parietal cortex has been ...
Oct 19, 2023
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Throwing in a scratchie or lottery ticket with your weekly shop or attending a regular bingo night might seem like a bit of harmless fun, but a new study suggests people underestimate the potentially harmful effects of these ...
Mar 2, 2021
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A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.
Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments. At the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in many countries, including the U.S.A. and most of Europe. This remained so until after World War II. In the 1960s casinos and lotteries began to appear throughout the world as a means to raise revenue in addition to taxes.
Lotteries come in many formats. For example, the prize can be a fixed amount of cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. More commonly the prize fund will be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the "50–50" draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue.[citation needed] Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket, resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.
The purchase of lottery tickets cannot be accounted for by decision models based on expected value maximization. The reason is that lottery tickets cost more than the expected gain, so one maximizing expected value should not buy lottery tickets. Yet, lottery purchases can be explained by decision models based on expected utility maximization, as the curvature of the utility function can be adjusted to capture risk-seeking behavior. More general models based on utility functions defined on things other than the lottery outcomes can also account for lottery purchase. In addition to the lottery prizes, the ticket may enable some purchasers to experience a thrill and to indulge in a fantasy of becoming wealthy. If the entertainment value (or other non-monetary value) obtained by playing is high enough for a given individual, then the purchase of a lottery ticket could represent a gain in overall utility. In such a case, the disutility of a monetary loss could be outweighed by the combined expected utility of monetary and non-monetary gain, thus making the purchase a rational decision for that individual.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA