Lottery is any game of chance in which winners are determined by a random drawing. Some lotteries are financial, where people pay a small sum for a chance to win a large sum of money; others are used to distribute goods and services, such as housing units or medical care. Many state governments run lotteries to raise money for public projects. The drawing of lots to determine rights and other fortunes has a long record, with several instances in the Bible, but the lottery as a means of raising money for material gain is more recent.
While winning the lottery is largely about luck, there are a variety of psychological motivations that drive people to play. One is a tendency to overweight small probabilities, Van Boven says. “If you think there is a 1% likelihood of something happening, you will often treat it as though it is actually a 5% probability.” Another reason is that people tend to minimize their responsibility for negative outcomes by attributing them to factors outside their control. This is known as the “counterfactual thinking” effect.
The term lottery was first printed in English in the 16th century, and the word probably originated from Middle Dutch loterie (literally “action of drawing lots”) or perhaps from a French calque on Middle Dutch lotinge (“action of drawing lots”). The word has since come to mean not only games of chance but also any competition in which entrants must pay to enter and their names are then drawn, even if subsequent stages require a significant degree of skill.