… become more conservative and less egalitarian?
Wait, that’s not how this game goes. You ask me about what I would do if I won the lottery and I tell you about giving generously to good causes or living large in the tropics or indulging in any number of real or imagined decadent behaviors only available to the 1%. Is there anyone who doesn’t daydream about winning the lottery?
Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee think that is all fine and good, but they measure some behavioral effects of very modest British lottery winners (less than $500,000) and have these money points for us:
We find that the larger is their lottery win, the greater is that person’s subsequent tendency, after controlling for other influences, to switch their political views from left to right.
Specifically, they find that for the bigger winners, about 20% who did not vote conservative prior to winning the lottery began to vote conservative after the win. And as for the “greedy”:
We also provide evidence that lottery winners are more sympathetic to the belief that ordinary people ‘already get a fair share of society’s wealth’.
So, next time someone asks you what you would do if you won the lottery, tell them you will probably become greedier and more conservative.