Why Can't People Act Randomly:

1. Because we have memories (for our past behaviors). We have to ignore our past in order to respond randomly.

2. We really don't know what random means, so we don't know how to act. Our misconceptions cause us to act 'badly.'

3. We have preferences for certain behaviors, we have styles. We like to do things a certain way, and, unless we are exceptionally vigilant, it will be hard to suppress these preferences.

Thus, it is unlikely we can meet Oprah Winfrey's and other's admonition to perform " random acts of kindness."

We will have to settle for just "being kind. "

Why is randomness so difficult for us?

1. The need for control feeds the illusion that we can control or predict chance events. Langer's illusion of control studies, some of which involve lotteries, show that even sophisticated people act in ways that suggest they don't understand the concept of randomness. To acknowledge a random world decreases our sense of power and prediction.

2. Numerical illiteracy: the consequences of a poor education. Probability is not taught, or taught poorly in schools, and usually not until high school. By then it may be too late.

3. But why wouldn't experience teach us? One reason is that in everyday experience we may not encounter that many randomly determined events (few of us hang around casinos or state lotteries), or the random events are hidden from us (chance encounters with microbes leading to sickness). Although there are random components to most of experiences, these components may be small relative to discernible cause-effect relations.

4. Finally, maybe our deterministic, cause-effect, thinking style keeps our minds from understanding the concept of randomness. The coin is going to come up either heads or tails, so the idea that there is a probability of it coming up heads is hard to grasp.

Conclusion: Discovering 'randomness' on our own is unlikely; after all, it took humans millions of years!