Rationally, this makes no sense. First, there s no way that a personally meaningful number sequence will stand a greater chance of winning in a random drawing. We may speculate that it might be possible to identify those at risk for mild depression by the fact that they choose the rational approach, rather than the irrational magical one. On the other hand, given that your chances of winning the lottery are probably less than those of finding buried treasure in your back yard, the very fact of buying the occasional lottery ticket may be indicative of a healthy temperament. Illusions aren t just comforting they improve performance.
People like to have the illusion of control.
But there s more to it than just this. Having an unrealistically positive self-image and an exaggerated sense of control over events may be construed as a sort of egocentricity. Therefore, positive self-illusions may have cognitive benefits for memory. Even more important, positive illusions feed back into performance. People with unrealistically high self-perceptions, belief in personal control, and optimism about their future are often more motivated and persistent, and may perform better because of this.