Each of us has a “relatively predictable” unpredictability
A team of researchers has discovered that each individual appears to possess a kind of strictly personal "chance generator." This means, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung explains, that the degree of chance in our behavior, as well as the way we "handle" the unexpected, is a stable individual tendency... and ultimately quite predictable.
What do a hare, a penalty-taking footballer, and a brilliant negotiator have in common? Their erratic or random behavior can, to some extent, give them an advantage.
The hare has a better chance of escaping the hunter when it changes direction abruptly and especially randomly. The footballer has a better chance of scoring when he doesn't always shoot in the same corner but sends the ball sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, up, down, or in the middle – provided the shot is accurate, of course. And a negotiator achieves better results when he behaves a little, but really just a little, erratically. Thanks to chance, the hare, the footballer, and the negotiator can be more difficult to predict for the person on the other side.
However, can human beings really accept chance and integrate it into their actions?
Long story short: not really.
If we want to go further, it's a little more complicated. A team of psychologists led by Tal Boger of Johns Hopkins University and Sami Yousif of the University of North Carolina has just published a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General that concludes that
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