The Mega Millions jackpot has reached a whopping $825 million – the seventh largest of all time – so it’s no wonder lottery fever is in the air. As stated on the Mega Millions website, the next drawing will take place on Friday evening and will have a cash payout of $382.2 million if there is a winner

For just $2, lottery players have the chance to earn a life-changing amount of money in an instant. “Sizable jackpots generate excitement because people imagine what life could be like if they won,” Eric Storch, professor and vice chair of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, tells Yahoo Life.

There is also something called the availability heuristic, where people “make judgments about the likelihood of an event based on how easily an example, instance, or case comes to mind.” For example, it’s easy to imagine winning the lottery after seeing previous winners with huge grins as they hold their huge check.

However, the reality is that the overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9, but the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. Why do these big jackpots turn even skeptics into hopeful believers?

It really depends on how hard it is for the human brain to grasp the actual low probability of winning. Research shows that “people tend to overestimate the likelihood of extreme events,” be it winning the lottery or being bitten by a shark.

“People have no idea of ​​big numbers,” Robert Williams, a psychologist specializing in gambling and addiction and a professor at the University of Lethbridge in Canada, tells Yahoo Life. “When people try to estimate the frequency of something, they rely on retrievable instances from their memories – this is why people think that deaths from accidents are more common than deaths from strokes. When it comes to lotteries, everyone knows someone who knows someone who has won a big jackpot.” But they don’t realize that it took billions of drawings for those people to win.

To better put a large number, like the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot, into perspective, Williams gives the following example: “If it takes 10 seconds to fill out a Powerball (or) Mega Millions ticket and it takes you 12 hours If you filled out $2 tickets every day of the year, it would take you 90 years and nearly $300 million to have a 50 percent chance of winning the jackpot.”

Another example: “If you bought a ticket every day of the year, it would take you 400,000 years to have a 50 percent chance of winning,” says Williams, adding another example to put things into perspective : “The Powerball (or) Mega Millions lottery is similar to paying $2 for the chance to guess which blade of grass on a football field is my favorite. You can pay another two dollars for another guess, but every time you guess I choose a different favorite blade of grass. “

While people often separate the lottery from gambling in a casino, “the lottery is gambling,” Stephen Goldbart, clinical psychologist and co-director of the Money, Meaning, & Choices Institute, tells Yahoo Life, “and gambling is gambling.” Our reptilian brain is like a child’s mind in that it is filled with the fantasy that something is free.”

He adds: “People don’t pay attention to the opportunities. Because when you start paying attention to the odds, then it’s “the adult mind” that has to intervene.

Instead, Goldbart says that when a big jackpot hits, the reptilian brain thinks, “‘Wow, this is a potential feast. Let’s get started.’” It’s the same as impulse buying. Everything will work out. It is “magical thinking” or childlike thinking.

Storch agrees, saying that some people who exhibit magical thinking when it comes to jackpots “may believe that luck is something that can be manipulated through magical thoughts or superstitious behaviors. The result is so significant, should it happen, that “People are afraid of missing out, which motivates them to act superstitiously/magical thinking.”

Not surprisingly, playing the lottery is particularly attractive to people who are struggling financially, says Goldbart. Research shows that those with the lowest socioeconomic status have the highest rates of lottery play. “For people on the dark side of the wealth gap who feel like their chances of getting out are slim,” the fantasy of winning the lottery is “pretty tempting.” Goldbart adds: “The fantasy, especially in difficult times Being able to be successful at times without having to do much for it is a powerful fantasy.”

It also helps that taking a chance on winning comes with a relatively small cost – just $2, although the price will rise to $5 in April 2025 – so the investment seems worth it, especially if the jackpot is very large is. “People see more ‘value’ in their $2 purchase when the price is $810 million rather than $100 million,” Williams says.

But experts agree that ultimately (and unfortunately) “the chances of winning remain very slim,” says Storch. “Although players will be careful to point out that the chances are still higher than those who do not take part.”

This article was originally published and updated on July 18, 2023.