The need for control can inspire great achievements, such as dams that prevent flooding, medicines to ease our lives, and perfectly confected chocolate soufflés. But it can also lead to sub-optimal behavior. Though people generally view “control freaks” in a negative light, that need makes us all vulnerable to making bad decisions – especially when it comes to money. Studies show that people feel more confident they’ll win at dice if they toss the dice themselves than if others toss them [2], and that they are likely to bet more money if they make their wager before the dice are tossed than afterward (where the outcome has been concealed)[3]. They’ll value a lottery ticket more if they can choose it than if it is given to them at random[4]. And in a well-known 1975 study in which Yale University students were asked to predict the results of coin tosses, a significant number of presumably intelligent Yalies believed their performance could improve through practice, and would have been hampered if they’d been distracted.[5] In each of these situations, the subjects knew that the enterprises in which they were engaged were unpredictable and beyond their control. When questioned, for example, none of the lottery players said they believed that being allowed to choose their card influenced their probability of winning. Yet on a deep, subconscious level they must have felt it did, because they behaved as if it did.

If you haven't yet read his book The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, you really ought to. And it is finally available in paperback.

tip to Josh

That's good news and you can probably board the train without taking off your shoes.

A recent neuroimaging study reveals that the ability to distinguish true from false in our daily lives involves two distinct processes. Previous research relied heavily on the premise that true and false statements are both processed in the left inferior frontal cortex. Carried out by researchers from the Universities of Lisbon and Vita-Salute, Milan, the June Cortex study found that we use two separate processes to determine the subtle distinctions between true and false in our daily lives.