General Belief in Luck

What it measures

Four items measure the extent to which a person believes in luck as a real force that operates differentially across individuals. Laporte and Briers (2019) borrowed the General Belief in Luck subscale from Darke and Freedman (1997) and used it in Study 4 with 164 Caucasian MTurk participants. A principal component analysis extracted a single factor.

Response format

6-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree; original format by Darke & Freedman 1997)

Scale items

• I believe in luck.
• Luck plays an important role in everyone's life.
• Some people are consistently lucky, and others are unlucky.
• There is such a thing as luck that favors some people but not others.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The response format used by Laporte and Briers (2019) was not described; Darke and Freedman (1997) used a 6-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree). Researchers should report whatever format they use.

Citation

Laporte, S., & Briers, B. (2019). Similarity as a double-edged sword: The positive and negative effects of showcasing similar previous winners on perceived likelihood of winning in sweepstakes. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(6), 1331–1349.

Keywords