CONSISTENT NEGATIVE OUTCOMES DO NOT RAISE THE PROBABILITY OF A POSITIVE RESPONSE When you toss a coin in the air, the potential outcomes on landing are heads or tails. What is more, every time you toss the coin, the probability of heads or tails is 50/50. In other words, each throw stands alone as a […]

CONSISTENT NEGATIVE OUTCOMES DO NOT RAISE THE PROBABILITY OF A POSITIVE RESPONSE When you toss a coin in the air, the potential outcomes on landing are heads or tails. What is more, every time you toss the coin, the probability of heads or tails is 50/50. In other words, each throw stands alone as a discrete event and each throw has the same probability of a head or tail outcome. Despite this self-evident fact, research has shown that when people gamble – they take the view that if they have had a run of negative outcomes (say tails) then they cannot be far away from a positive outcome (say heads). Clearly, this is absurd. Each throw is a discrete event – with a run of losses having no impact whatsoever on the likelihood of future success. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone say, “what…