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Play the lottery with buddies from work. Win big. Spend an eternity, a fortune and your sanity tussling over the cash. The scene playing out for two groups of employees in the Toronto area - each claiming a $50-million jackpot, only to find part of their cash payout put on hold because of competing claims of who bought in, who meant to buy in and who should have been included - plays into some of the most basic psychosocial instincts of trust and group loyalty… "We settled. . . . When you settle, nobody wins."

Don't get Donald Taylor started: The McGill psychology professor doesn't like the way lotteries hijack meritocratic societal assumptions - "that you get rewarded depending upon your ability and effort."

Lottery jackpots throw that concept out the window - but at the same time, he said, winning big can create a "false sense of deserving."

"People believe they caused themselves to win... The implications are that when you win, instead of saying, 'God, that's dumb luck,' you say, 'No, I caused it to win.'" And that makes it all the harder to relinquish a portion of the winnings: It becomes a matter of principle.