The loop

The steady appeal of the lottery is due to various psychological tricks by the marketers: suspension of logic and reason and the dreams that it sells.

Using the variable rewards concept of psychology, the marketers ensure that people keep buying their tickets for years, by introducing smaller wins with much better odds. This helped lottery buyers experience the thrill of a win.

The odds to win are so small that winning does not even feature in our decision matrix of buying a ticket. The game of lottery isn’t played on logic, or for investment, but for entertainment.

For as little as two dollars, a person dreams of getting a chance to win thousands of dollars, and that dream is worth the price of the ticket. The bigger the jackpot is, the more the dreams are fed.

Addiction can include:

• Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
• Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
• Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation. 

The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.

• Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
• The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
• Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products.