What Are the Chances? - by Barbara Blatchley (Hardcover)

About the Book

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control.

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology

Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice--or can our beliefs help change our luck?

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people--who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy--as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can--fingers crossed--help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

Review Quotes

Delightful.-- "GQ"

Witty in tone. Psychology and neuroscience professor Blatchley (Statistics in Context) takes an impressive and accessible look at luck and humans' refusal to accept randomness. Those wondering why they've never managed to buy a winning lottery ticket would do well to start here.-- "Publishers Weekly"

What Are the Chances? provides intriguing insights into the neuroscientific and psychological underpinnings of how we perceive luck and chance. Such errors of probability judgments are often systematic rather than random. They may arise from misapplication of heuristics that originally were useful shortcuts. A worthwhile read.--V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

Barbara Blatchley provides a colorful and accessible look at the fascinating nature of luck. Focusing on the human side as well as the neuroscientific and psychological aspects, she explores what luck is and the role luck plays in our lives.--David Hand, emeritus professor of mathematics and senior research investigator, Imperial College London, and author of The Improbability Principle

Who among us does not speak of luck? Good luck, bad luck, cross your fingers, lucky charms? And yet few among us has any real understanding of what it means to be lucky or unlucky. This book provides an excellent examination of just what luck is, presented in a manner that entertains as it explains. It is a most enjoyable and informative read, and one that I highly recommend.--James E. Alcock, professor, York University, and author of Belief: What It Means to Believe and Why Our Convictions Are So Compelling

About the Author

Barbara Blatchley is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Agnes Scott College. Her research focuses on auditory sensory physiology, and she is the author of Statistics in Context (2018).