Driving the news: The reason why, some psychologists and public health experts say, is that the allure of lotteries for many people is simply that the prospect of winning a great prize seems better than passing up the chance, regardless of the odds. "When you buy a lottery ticket for Mega Millions, for example, you literally have a chance of becoming a multimillionaire. If you don't buy that ticket, you don't have that chance," Nathan Novemsky, a professor of marketing and psychology at Yale University, told Axios. Novemsky noted that people have a hard time conceiving the odds of winning, and when the chances are so "incredibly low," many tend it overweight them. Another reason incentives could work is that most prizes can be categorized as "fun stuff," Novemsky said.