“with good luck”: belief in good luck and cognitive planning

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Personality and Individual Differences 39 (2005) 1217–1226

‘‘With Good Luck’’: Belief in good luck and cognitive planning

Liza Day a,*, John Maltby b,1

a Psychology Subject Group, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S10 2BP England, United Kingdomb School of Psychology, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH England, United Kingdom

Received 13 September 2004; received in revised form 23 February 2005; accepted 18 April 2005Available online 19 July 2005

Abstract

Recent findings have suggested that belief in good luck is an adaptive cognitive process. The presentstudies sought to extend this view by examining the relationship between belief in good luck within goalorientated thoughts. In Study 1, among 222 social science undergraduate students, findings suggest a sta-tistically significant relationship between belief in good luck and hope. To extend this view the role of beliefin good luck in individuals� confidence in completing a goal was examined among 96 social science under-graduate students. The present findings suggest that belief in good luck plays a significant part in the plan-ning of a completion of a goal. However, findings suggest that the role that good luck plays may depend onwhether luck is seen as an internal or external attribute, conscious and realistic thought process, or indeedwhether good luck is perceived as needed at all.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Good luck; Hope; Goals; Optimism; Planning

1. Introduction

Belief in luck has been shown to be associated with self-esteem, gambling behaviour and theperception of positive and negative life events (Wiseman, 2004).

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.paid.2005.04.011

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Day).

1 Tel.: +44 116 252 2170.

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1218 L. Day, J. Maltby / Personality and Individual Differences 39 (2005) 1217–1226

Within the literature, there are traditionally two psychological explanations of belief in luck.The first explanation views luck as an external, unstable factor within social events (Rotter,1966; Weiner et al., 1971). Here, belief in luck is perceived as uncontrollable, having little influenceon future expectations. A second explanation of luck views belief in luck as a personal attribute,and as an internal and stable factor (Darke & Freedman, 1997a).

Much of the work supporting the first perspective has been carried out within the context ofattribution theory and research has shown that individuals making external attributions (i.e. see-ing events as being due to luck) are less mentally healthy. Researchers adopting the second per-spective (luck as an internal and stable attribute) have made a distinction between whether peopleconsider themselves lucky or unlucky, with perceptions of being lucky being associated with bettermental health (Darke & Freedman, 1997a, 1997b; Taylor & Brown, 1988) and perception of beingunlucky being associated with poorer mental health (Ellis, 1971, 1973; Rotter, 1966; Seligman,1975).

Belief in good luck is seen as an adaptive process. Researchers suggest that the positive illusionssurrounding luck, even in situations where the individual has little control on future expectations,can still lead to feelings of confidence, control and optimism (Darke & Freedman, 1997a, 1997b;Taylor & Brown, 1988). As part of this evaluation, Darke and Freedman (1997b) developed a 12-item belief in good luck scale to measure good luck beliefs and determine their implication forperception of control. The notion that belief in good luck may be adaptive is supported by worksuggesting that scores on the belief in good luck scale are positively correlated with locus of con-trol and optimism (Darke & Freedman, 1997a, 1997b) and negatively correlated with depressionand anxiety (Day & Maltby, 2003; Day, Maltby, & Macaskill, 1999).

Consequently, researchers have tried to examine the relationship between belief in good luckand mental health within existing psychological models. Specifically, Day and Maltby (2003)found that dispositional optimism (a trait cognitive variable measuring positive future expecta-tions and positive coping strategy Scheier & Carver, 1985), mediated the relationship between be-lief in good luck and mental health. Within the context of that study, the findings suggest thatbelief in good luck comprises optimistic coping strategies and dispositional behaviours that leadto better mental health. This finding is consistent in supporting the view that belief in good luckproduces a positive illusion that leads to feelings of confidence, control and optimism (Darke &Freedman, 1997a, 1997b; Taylor & Brown, 1988).

As belief in good luck is firmly related to optimistic thinking and behaviour, this finding sug-gests that optimism might be a central variable in providing a further consideration of cognitivethinking strategies used by those who believe in good luck. One of the other main features of dis-positional optimism is that the individual will expect good events to happen (Scheier & Carver,1985) and that a person who shows high levels of dispositional optimism will continue to worktowards attaining their goals, instead of giving up, as they always expect outcomes to be favour-able. These expectancies then are believed to have an influence on an individual�s affective expe-rience (i.e. negative versus positive mood state), and are considered to be stable characteristicsthat the individual will display consistently across time and context.

The fact that optimistic thinking is also linked to goal orientated thinking and behaviour mayprovide a further theoretical framework for understanding belief in good luck. In addition to opti-mism, the theory of hope (Snyder et al., 1991) may additionally provide a psychological model bywhich to further understand belief in good luck. Hope as a goal-related cognitive process that

L. Day, J. Maltby / Personality and Individual Differences 39 (2005) 1217–1226 1219

comprises two cognitive processes regarding completing future goals (Babyak, Snyder, & Yoshin-obu, 1993; Cheavens, Gum, & Snyder, 2000):

(1) Agency, the degree to which an individual has the perceived motivation to move toward hisor her goals (e.g. ‘‘I energetically pursue my goals’’ [item 2]) and

(2) Pathways, subscale, which comprises the perceived ability to generate workable routes togoals (‘‘There are lots of ways around any problem’’ [item 4]).

Therefore, by examining the relationship between belief in good luck and hope, there would be aconsideration, in addition to optimism, of how belief in good luck is related to other aspects ofpositive cognitive perceptions and planning of future goals. In other words, the relationshipbetween belief in good luck and optimism and hope is of interest to furnish cognitive explanationsof belief in good luck. Therefore, the aim of the first study is to examine the relationship betweenbelief in good luck, hope and optimism (the latter to be included to allow comparison with pre-vious findings). It is predicted that belief in good luck will share a significant positive correlationwith both optimism and hope.

2. Study 1

2.1. Method

2.1.1. RespondentsQuestionnaires were given to 222 social science undergraduate students (108 males, 114 fe-

males) in an university located in the Midlands of the United Kingdom. Respondents were agedbetween 18 and 30 years (M = 20.51; SD = 2.0). One hundred and eighty one of the respondentsreported to be of a white ethnic origin and 37 respondents reported to be of an Asian origin, fiverespondents reported to be of a Black origin, and two respondents declined to report the ethnicity.

2.1.2. Measures

(1) The Belief in Good Luck Scale (Darke & Freedman, 1997b) that comprises 12 items. Itemsinclude ‘‘I consistently have good luck [item 7]’’ and ‘‘Luck works in my favour [item10]’’. Responses are scored on a six-point scale anchored by �strongly disagree� and �stronglyagree�. Higher scores on this scale indicate a higher level of belief in good luck.

(2) The Life Orientation Test—Revised: LOT-R (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994). The originalLOT (Scheier & Carver, 1985) was a 10-item scale with two filler items, four positivelyworded items, and four reverse-coded items. The LOT-R has been revised to remove collo-quialisms, and to address any issues of neuroticism accounting for unique variance withmental health variables in place of optimism (Smith, Pope, Rhodewalt, & Poulton, 1989).It is a 10-item measure with four filler items, three positively worded items, and threereverse-coded items. Respondents indicate their degree of agreement with statements suchas, ‘‘In uncertain times, I usually expect the best’’, using a five-point response scale rangingfrom ‘‘strongly disagree’’ to ‘‘strongly agree’’. Negatively worded items are reversed, and asingle score is obtained measuring higher levels of optimism.


(3) The Trait Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991). There are two subscales that tap the reciprocallydetermined components of hope. The Agency subscale, made up of four items, measures thedegree to which an individual has the perceived motivation to move toward his or her goals(e.g. ‘‘I energetically pursue my goals’’ [item 2]). The Pathways subscale, made up of fouritems, measures the degree to which an individual has the perceived ability to generate work-able routes to goals, under both unimpeded and impeded goal-pursuit circumstances (e.g.‘‘There are lots of ways around any problem’’ [item 4]). Responses are scored on an eight-point Likert scale, with anchors ranging from definitely false (1) to definitely true (8). Higherscores indicate higher levels of hopeful thought.

2.2. Results

Table 1 shows the mean scores and standard deviations of all the scales by sex. Among the pres-ent sample, no sex differences were found for scores on any of the scales. In addition, Table 1shows the Cronbach�s alpha coefficients (Cronbach, 1951) computed for all the scales. The presentfindings suggest that all the scales and subscales used demonstrate adequate internal reliabilityamong the present sample as they are all above a criterion of acceptability of .7 (see, for example,Kline, 1986).

Table 2 shows Pearson product moment correlation coefficients computed between all the vari-ables. Consistent, with all a priori predictions all the variables shared a statistically significant po-sitive relationship.

Table 1Cronbach�s alpha and mean scores for all the scales by sex (Study 1)

a Male (n = 108) Female (n = 114)

M SD M SD t

Belief in Good Luck .72 38.80 8.5 37.46 9.7 1.08Optimism .75 20.25 3.8 20.09 4.3 .30Hope agency .82 22.61 4.3 23.50 4.2 �1.55Hope pathways .81 23.79 3.9 22.87 4.2 1.68

Table 2Pearson product moment correlation coefficient between all the variables (Study 1)

n = 222

1 2 3 4

1. Belief in Good Luck – .28** .36** .33**

2. Optimism – .27** .54**

3. Hope agency – .40**

4. Hope pathways –

** p < .01 (2-tailed).


Due to these statistically significant positive correlations between all the measures a standar-dised multiple regression was performed, with belief in good luck used as the dependent variable,and optimism and hope variables used as predictor variables. The regression statistic (r) was sig-nificantly different from zero for belief in good luck scores (F(3,221) = 16.40, p < .01). Both scoreson the Hope agency and the Hope pathways subscales accounted for unique variance in belief ingood luck scores.

2.3. Discussion of Study 1

The present findings suggest that belief in good luck is related to hope, and together, bothdimensions of hope predict statistically significant unique variance in belief in good luck scores.Furthermore, though optimism shares a significant positive correlation with belief in good luck,it does not predict unique variance in belief in good luck when considered alongside hope. Con-sequently, belief in good luck shares a statistically significant relationship with an individual�s per-ceived motivation to move toward his or her goals and a perceived ability to generate workableroutes to goals, and is best considered within a psychological model of hope rather than, as pre-viously conceptualised, a psychological model of optimism. Therefore, further empirical examina-tion is needed to aid the theorising of how belief in good luck is an adaptive process within amodel of hope (Table 3).

The present finding suggests that those who believe in good luck also report that they weremore likely than others to attempt to achieve their goals and persevere in the face of obstacles.This can be explored in greater depth by examining whether belief in good luck may play a sig-nificant part in perception of the planning of goals. Therefore, it is suggested that an individual�sperception of completing a goal will be predicted by not only an intention to work towards a goal,and their goal orientated behaviour (i.e. pathways and agency hope), but also involve the percep-tion that they may need a little good luck to achieve the goal. For example, people going for a jobinterview may feel that getting that job may not only rely on their own talents and abilities, butalso on the good fortune that no-one else better applies for the job.

Therefore, the aim of Study 2 was to test whether belief in good luck is a significant predictor ofpeople�s confidence in the completion of their goals.

Table 3Standardised regression with Belief in Good Luck as a dependent variable and optimism, hope agency and hopepathways used as predictor variables (Study 1)

n = 222

B B sr2

Belief in Good Luck

1. Optimism .28 .122. Hope agency .58 .26 .07**

3. Hope pathways .35 .16 .03*

r2 = .18, Adj r2 = .17, r = .43

* p < .05.** p < .01 (2-tailed).


3. Study 2

3.1. Respondents

Questionnaires were given to 96 social science undergraduate students (45 males, 51 females) inan university located in the Midlands of the UK. Respondents were aged between 20 and 35 years(M = 21.31; SD = 3.1). Eighty four of the respondents reported to be of a white ethnic origin and12 respondents reported to be of an Asian origin.

3.2. Procedure

Respondents were given the following instructions:

Think about something that you want to achieve in the future; namely a �goal� in life. This�goal� should be a real and important achievement, which you are hoping to achieve and itshould be a real ambition of yours. Now think about the possibility of achieving this goaland the different things that may need to happen for you to succeed and rate the followingstatements.

Respondents were asked a set of 12 questions, all scored on a five-point scale ranging from (1)strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. The first question was designed to assess the confidence therespondent has in achieving the goal (‘‘I will achieve this goal’’).

The second question was designed to measure respondents� intention to work towards the goal(‘‘I will need to do at least some work to achieve this goal’’).

The next four questions were revised items of the Hope Pathways to measure perceived abilityto generate workable routes to the specific goal in the aforementioned scenario (‘‘Even if I getstuck, I can think of many ways to getting my goal’’, ‘‘There are lots of ways to pursue this goal’’,‘‘I can think of many ways to get this goal’’, and ‘‘Even if I get discouraged, I know I can find away to get this goal’’).

The next four questions were revised items of the Hope Agency to measure perceived motiva-tion to move toward the specific goal in the aforementioned scenario (‘‘I will need to energeticallypursue my goal’’, ‘‘My past experiences will prepare me well for achieving this goal’’, ‘‘My pastexperiences will help me be successful in achieving my goal’’, and ‘‘I will meet the goal that Iset for myself’’).

The final two questions centred on belief in good luck required for achieving the aforemen-tioned goal (‘‘I will need a certain amount of good luck to achieve this goal’’ and ‘‘To achieve thisgoal, there may need to be some good luck involved, so that things go my way’’).

3.3. Results

Table 4 shows the mean scores and standard deviations of all the scales by sex. Among the pres-ent sample, sex differences were found for scores on both the hope agency and hope pathwaysmeasure, with males scoring statistically significantly higher than females. In addition, Table 1shows the Cronbach�s alpha coefficients (Cronbach, 1951) computed for all the scales. The presentfindings suggest that all the scales and subscales used demonstrate adequate internal reliability.

Table 4Cronbach�s alpha and mean scores for all the scales by sex (Study 2)

Male (n = 45) Female (n = 51) t

1. Anticipated Achievement of Goal 4.13 (0.6) 4.24 (0.6) �.782. Need Good Luck 3.13 (1.2) 2.82 (0.9) 1.493. Good Luck and things to go way 3.20 (1.0) 3.06 (0.9) .744. Need to do some Work 4.53 (0.5) 4.71 (0.4) �1.755. Hope agency (Adapted) 16.47 (2.1) 15.41 (1.5) 2.91**

6. Hope pathways (Adapted) 14.80 (1.9) 13.76 (2.4) 2.33*

* p < .05.** p < .01 (2-tailed).

Table 5Pearson product moment correlation coefficient between all the variables (Study 2)

n = 96

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Confidence in Achievement of Goal – .43** �.23* .21* .45** .46**

2. Need Good Luck – .74** .04 .25* .193. Good Luck and things to go way – .04 .32** .124. Need to do some Work – .38** .26**

5. Hope agency (Revised) – .48**

6. Hope pathways (Revised) –

* p < .05.** p < .01 (2-tailed).


Table 5 shows the Pearson product moment correlation coefficients computed between all thevariables. Consistent with all a priori predictions, all the variables shared a statistically significantpositive relationship with confidence of achievement of set goals, except for the �need for goodluck� variable, which shared a significant negative relationship. Both the good luck variables,and both hope subscales shared a statistically significant positive relationship with their respectivepartner variable, suggesting some concurrent validity for both these sets of variables in the presentstudy. Further, both aspects of belief in good luck share a statistically significant positive corre-lation with hope agency, but not a significant relationship with the hope pathways goal measureand the intention to do some work.

Due to these statistically significant positive correlations between all the measures a standar-dised multiple regression was performed with the confidence in anticipated achievement of goalused as the dependent variable, and the need to do some work, hope, and need of good luck vari-ables used as predictor variables. Because of the differing correlation direction of the good luckvariables with anticipated achievement of the goal, these two variables were entered into theregression separately. The regression statistic (r) was significantly different from zero for confi-dence in achievement of goal (F(5,90) = 19.86, p < .01). All the variables accounted for uniquevariance in confidence in achievement of goals (Table 6).

Table 6Standardised regression with Confidence in Completion of Goal used as a dependent variable and optimism, hope andgood luck variables used as predictor variables (Study 2)

n = 222

B B sr2

Anticipated Completion of Goal

1. Need Good Luck �.39 �.62 .38**

2. Good Luck and things to go my way .24 .34 .12**

3. Need to do some Work .35 .27 .07**

4. Hope agency .08 .22 .05*

5. Hope pathways .10 .35 .12**

r2 = .53, Adj r2 = .50, r = .72

* p < .05.** p < .01 (2-tailed).


4. Discussion

Overall, evidence from Study 1 suggests that belief in good luck is related to positive goal ori-entated behaviour, and it may be that the definition of belief in good luck may sometimes extendbeyond a positive illusion demonstrating a belief of little control on future expectations (Darke &Freedman, 1997a, 1997b; Taylor & Brown, 1988) by playing a role in more realistic expectations,ambitions and hope. Findings from Study 2 suggest that sometimes belief in good luck is viewedas an important component when people are planning their goals, and as such, may be viewed asan important component as well as their intention to work towards a goal and their own abilitiesand motivation regarding achievement of a goal. Together, these findings suggest that belief ingood luck may have a part to play in cognitions around planning goals.

However, the present findings suggest a dynamic relationship between belief in good luck andconfidence in completion of a goal. Though it was hypothesised that belief in good luck wouldalways be positively related to confidence regarding completion of a goal, the present findings sug-gest that belief in good luck might enter into the process in contrary ways. The statement ‘‘toachieve this goal, there may need to be some good luck involved, so that things go my way’’was positively related to confidence in completion of the goal, while the statement ‘‘I will needa certain amount of good luck to achieve this goal’’ was negatively related to confidence in com-pletion of the goal. This difference, within the context of other findings (the two belief in good luckstatements showed a high positive correlation [r > .7] and similar sized significant positive corre-lations with the hope agency scale) is interesting as it suggests that there are subtle distinctions inthe use of good luck within a schema of achieving goals.

There are perhaps two explanations for this finding. First, in the present study, the dependentvariable is confidence in completing the goal. Therefore, while the first statement might reflectluck as an internal controllable attribute (to achieve this goal, there may need to be some goodluck involved, so that things go my way), the latter statement can be seen as a more pessimisticstatement (I will need a certain amount of good luck to achieve this goal) and this reflects a viewthat luck is external and uncontrollable. Consequently, this finding may suggest that while somepeople might use belief in good luck as part of a schema when planning their goals, differences in


confidence of completing goals depends on whether they attribute luck as more internal and con-trollable attribute, or view it as external and uncontrollable attribute.

A second interpretation of this finding is that the first statement revolves around the notion thatluck is necessary, whereas the second statement revolves around the issue of whether luck may beneeded at all. Therefore, for the first statement it may reflect the belief that the goal is particularlyhard, and this could not be achieved without a huge amount of luck. Alternatively, for the secondstatement, the individual may believe that luck might be needed, but if they did not get lucky, theywould be able to achieve the goal anyway. This finding suggests that those agreeing with the sec-ond statement are more confident of achieving their goals than those buying into the secondmodel.

The next step in the research process is to take these theoretical ideas and test them withinspecific contexts. The methodology of the second study can be improved, as the validity and reli-ability of many of the 1-item measures used in this study can be challenged. Future researchshould try then to develop multi-item measures of good luck perception in achieving a goalbased on perceptions of luck as internal and external and whether it is indeed needed. The sec-ond study also suffers from the methodological problem that while it asked for an important goalin the respondent�s life, it did not control for how hard the respondents felt the type of goal theywere asked to think about was to achieve. Future work should have participants describe thegoal that they were thinking of during the experiment, or asking them to all think of the sametype of goal.

Future research may also try to look at overlaps with other psychological concepts to provide astronger theoretical base. Clearly the approaches of optimism and hope overlap, there is a need tolocate this work within a major psychological approach, the obvious perhaps being positive psy-chology. However, there is also a need to examine the findings within other cognitive models ofthinking. For example, Day and Maltby (2003) found that irrational beliefs were also strongly re-lated to belief in good luck, suggesting a relationship with overly-idealistic general beliefs mayinfluence belief in good luck. Furthermore, there is a descriptive overlap between hope and voli-tion (a conscious choice and decision), therefore researchers could look at how much belief ingood luck is related to dimensions of conscious and realistic decision making, or may reflectoverly-idealistic general beliefs.

Notwithstanding these speculations, the present findings suggest that belief in good luck isadaptive, and is related to goal orientated hope. Furthermore, the present findings also suggestthat belief in good luck may be part of a cognitive schema that is used when individuals work to-wards a goal. Overall the studies are valuable in that they suggest specific considerations to bemade when looking at belief in good luck to consider the context of the causes and consequencesof this belief. However, findings suggest that the role that good luck plays may depend on whetherluck is seen as an internal or an external attribute, a conscious and realistic thought process orindeed whether it is perceived as needed at all.

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“with good luck”: belief in good luck and cognitive planning

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