Luck is a concept people regularly invoke to make sense of their own achievements or failures, as well as those of others. Despite these frequent attributions, there is scant empirical evidence about how people view the role of luck in their lives, and how these views vary across the population. This proposal will analyze how people define luck, their views about the influence of luck on individual outcomes, and the aspects of their lives, e.g., financial success, job status, health, personal relationships, to which they apply luck. A critical component of the research will evaluate the extent to which people attribute socioeconomic outcomes to luck as compared with individual talents and effort. A better understanding of these perceptions will shed new light on views about social inequality, the factors that lead to success and failure, and individual motivations. These findings will provide new information to help individuals in society reflect upon the relative roles of luck, talent, and effort as reasons for their own outcomes as well as the outcomes for others in society.
This proposal will conduct in-depth, open-ended interviews with a broadly representative national sample of 100 U.S. adults. Data will include age, socioeconomic status, race, military experience, health history, political affiliation, and gender. Data analysis will be conducted using ATLAS.ti. Following the general principles of grounded theory and abductive analysis, all interviews will be coded for primary patterns of response identifying general themes and key variations among participant groups. These findings will lay the foundation for a better understanding of how people view the determinants of success in their own life trajectories as well as for others. The findings will inform a variety of sociological theories seeking to understand the origins of inequality and how these origins play out across the life course.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
