Another look at why people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets

People are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, a result that previous investigators have attributed to anticipated regret. The authors suggest that people’s subjective likelihood judgments also make them disinclined to switch. Four studies examined likelihood judgments with respect to exchanged and retained lottery tickets and found that (a) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win a lottery than are retained tickets and (b) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win the more aversive it would be if the ticket did win. The authors provide evidence that this effect occurs because the act of imagining an exchanged ticket winning the lottery increases the belief that such an event is likely to occur

Why people are reluctant to tempt fate

The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to “tempt fate. ” Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3–6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to attend to negative prospects and to use accessibility as a cue when judging likelihood. Study 3 demonstrated that negative outcomes are more accessible following actions that tempt fate than following actions that do not tempt fate. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that the heightened accessibility of negative outcomes mediates the elevated perceptions of likelihood. Finally, Study 6 examined the automatic nature of the underlying processes. The types of actions that are thought to tempt fate as well as the role of society and culture in shaping this magical belief are discussed

Befriending the enemy: Outgroup friendship longitudinally predicts intergroup attitudes in a coexistence program for Israelis and Palestinians

One of the largest Middle East coexistence programs annually brings together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers for a 3-week camp in the United States. For 3 years, we longitudinally tracked how this intervention affected Israelis’ and Palestinians’ relationships with, and attitudes toward, each other. Specifically, we measured participants’ outgroup attitudes immediately before and after camp, and, for 2 years, 9 months following “reentry” to their home countries. In all 3 years, participants’ attitudes toward the outgroup improved from precamp to postcamp. Participants who formed an outgroup friendship during camp developed more positive feelings toward outgroup campers, which generalized to an increase in positivity toward all outgroup members. Although the positivity faded upon campers’ reentry, there was significant residual positivity after reentry compared to precamp. Finally, positivity toward the outgroup after reentry was also predicted by outgroup friendships. Future contact interventions may profit from encouraging individuals to make and maintain outgroup friendships