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Opening Arguments

Rich and content

They always say I'd be miserable if I won the lottery because the sudden and unearned wealth would overwhelm me. Turns out they're lying weasels:

It has taken a few decades, but that research has finally been done. The findings are good news for those who hit the jackpot — and for the rest of us who want to get off that hedonic treadmill.

The feelings of hundreds of lottery winners were tracked in two separate studies, both drawing on a British national survey of adults who were extensively interviewed annually about their states of mind and about events in their lives.

[. . .]

The curse of the lottery was further debunked in a survey of more than 400 Swedish lottery winners by Anna Hedenus, a sociologist at the University of Gothenburg. She found that most winners refrained from splurging, preferring to save or invest the prize money, and that most reported being quite content.

“The story about the unhappy, squandering winner primarily functions as a cautionary tale,” Dr. Hedenus says. “But this is not the common reaction to the lottery windfall.”

In other words, if I win big money in the lottery, there is a very good chance I will be darn happy about it. Come to think of it, I would even mind being rich and miserable.

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