The Journal of Gambling Behavior

Early this morning I was right on track for a direct flight out to an interview in West Virginia, then the whole day was changed by a series of brief moments. 

First, I was waiting for a west-bound Red Line train to the airport. The train pulled in with a Red Line sign so I stepped on board with my luggage in tow, but then realized its listed destination was the east-bound endpoint. In a split second of panic, I realized I was on the wrong train, hit the “door open” button, and stepped off before it pulled out of the station. Whew! But standing on the platform, I then watched with horror as the train headed west after all. It had been the right train, just with the wrong sign, and I had managed to miss it.  A split second.

After a nail-biting 30 minute wait for the next west-bound Red Line train, and an inconceivably slow ride to the airport, I jumped off the train as soon as its doors opened and literally ran to the US Airways counter, reaching it at 9:12am which would give me just enough time to clear security and catch my plane. Whew! But they informed me that the cut-off time for check-in was 9:09 am, so they could not give me a boarding pass for the flight.  3 minutes.

The desk agent searched far and wide within her system then issued me standby tickets for a convoluted series of flights that, with a bit of luck, would get me there eventually. She also told me “Off the record, if you happened to run, and happened to reach the gate on time for your original flight, they might happen to let you on, even though I can’t issue you tickets for it.” I ran. More accurately, I sprinted. I arrived to gate C16 out of breath and frazzled at the very moment that the gate agent clicked the jetway door closed. 60 seconds earlier and they would have smiled me through an open door. I was looking through a window at the plane I should be on. All they had to do was turn a doorknob to let me through onto that plane. Nope. All door closures are final.  1 minute.

Why is it that narrowly missing something is so much more agonizing than missing it by a long shot? Regardless of whether I missed it by seconds or missed it by hours, the flight is equally missed, so why did the near miss feel so different; so compelling? 
And why is it that in the wake of a near miss, my next instinct was to look for the Hand of Fate, the deeper significance, the Grand Planned Reason why things went how they did?

Gwyneth Paltrow, for whom the alternate realities of life

hinge on missing vs catching a subway train.

In one reality, she finds her soul mate and exquisite happiness,

while in the other she ends up with a flattering haircut.

I should specify: I do not expect a soul mate or a good haircut to result from this morning's chain of events. My point is that the near miss triggered a reflexive search for meaning that a far miss wouldn't have. As all lost souls tend to do on a quest for meaning, I did a Google search.  (Full disclosure: I searched for "the psychology of near misses," not for "the meaning of life and love and good haircuts." I promise.)

Here's the gem it came up with. It's not exactly on target for my situation, but it's a fabulously good read! I recommend you ditch this blog post and go read the article instead. Highlights:

 - It's from the Journal of Gambling Behavior.  That exists? Yes, that exists.

 - In the short term, near misses (of the nearly-won variety, not the nearly-lost variety) tend to lure people into gambling longer and spending more.

 - In the long term, a person who experiences near miss after near miss stops feeling as stimulated by it. Instead, cognitive restructuring occurs, such that they stop expecting that a near-win this time is any prediction of an actual win next time. This element of it fascinates me. By extension outside the gambling realm, does it mean that exposing people to a long series of near-wins without a real win can extinguish their sense of hope? Conversely, would exposing someone to a long series of near-losses without a real loss extinguish their fear of failure? Can this be leveraged to make the timid more brave?