In this blog post, we’ll explore why we feel like we’re the only ones with bad luck, as well as the reasons behind Murphy’s Law and the psychological illusions hidden within it.
Murphy’s Law
On days when I leave later than usual, the shuttle bus line is much longer than expected, and even after waiting for a long time, the bus doesn’t come—and I often find the doors closing right in front of me. I often wonder why bad things seem to happen to me so often. For example, it’s not just about missing the bus; when rushing in the morning, especially on important days, I tend to spill my coffee or trip over my untied shoelaces. When waiting in line at the restroom or supermarket checkout, even if I choose the line that looks shortest, the one I’m in always feels like it’s moving the slowest. Also, when I accidentally drop a slice of bread with jam on it, why does the jam always land face down?
Whenever these things happen, people are reminded of “Murphy’s Law,” which states that bad luck always happens to them alone. Murphy’s Law became widely known after Captain Murphy, who worked at an air force base, first mentioned it in 1949. He said, “If there are several ways to do a job and one of them is bound to cause trouble, someone is bound to use that method.” This was originally used to mean that one should always anticipate the worst and prepare for it. However, nowadays, Murphy’s Law is used to describe a situation where a series of misfortunes seems to happen exclusively to oneself. While it’s certainly not true that bad things only happen to me in succession, everyone has experienced and can relate to such situations.
Minor Misfortunes We Often Encounter in Daily Life
In fact, Murphy’s Law is found more often in minor, everyday mishaps than in major disasters. For example, imagine getting ready for an important presentation in the morning only to have a button fall off your shirt or spill your coffee. When these unfortunate events happen one after another, we think of Murphy’s Law and feel, “Sure enough, only I have to go through this kind of misfortune.” People often use Murphy’s Law as a tool to explain situations that feel as though something is deliberately tormenting them. However, there are clearly scientific and psychological factors underlying this phenomenon. So, why do we get the illusion that unfortunate events keep happening only to us?
The first reason is that even when events happening to us are actually not rare misfortunes but rather natural occurrences that can be explained statistically and scientifically, people still mistakenly believe they are experiencing misfortune. Professor Robert Matthew of the University of Birmingham in the UK proved that Murphy’s Law is not simply a matter of bad luck but a statistically inevitable outcome. He explained this phenomenon using the example of waiting in line at a supermarket checkout. If there are 10 checkout lanes, the probability that the line I’m in will move the fastest is 1 in 10. However, the probability that another line will move faster is 9 in 10. Therefore, experiencing that a line other than the one I’m in moves faster 90% of the time is statistically inevitable.
By the same principle, when grocery shopping, the chocolate bar you bought to eat on the way home often ends up at the very bottom of your cart, making it impossible to reach during the trip. This is a scientifically inevitable phenomenon: the small chocolate bar moves through a process of physical mixing within the cart, slipping between larger items until it eventually settles at the bottom. Therefore, there is no need to think that you were unlucky and couldn’t enjoy the chocolate bar.
Focus on Negative Events and Confirmation Bias
The second reason is a psychological factor: even when people experience both unfortunate and non-unfortunate events, they are more deeply affected by the unfortunate ones, regard them as more important, and remember them for longer, whereas they easily forget events that go smoothly. Murphy’s Law arises from psychologists’ claims that negative events are imprinted more firmly in our minds—specifically, from confirmation bias, which causes us to perceive memories of misfortune more strongly than memories of good fortune. This contrasts with Sally’s Law, which states that only events that happen to be in one’s favor occur repeatedly by chance. If life is filled with both good and bad events, the probability of a bad event occurring is, at most, 50%.
Murphy’s Law occurs because when situations we desire happen as expected, the brain’s structural characteristics cause them to be perceived as unimportant information, causing them to fade from memory quickly. Conversely, unexpected information is perceived as important and is remembered for a long time. This makes it feel as though unfortunate events account for a very high proportion of our lives. As this experience repeats, people attach greater significance to Murphy’s Law and come to feel that misfortune repeatedly befalls them.
There is no such thing as a world where only bad things happen to me. It is simply that, for the two reasons mentioned above, we either mistake events that were bound to happen anyway for misfortune, or we fail to remember the smooth-sailing moments. There is no need to think so pessimistically that only bad things will happen to me. Everything happens fairly according to the law of cause and effect. Therefore, instead of focusing only on the unfortunate events that happen to you through no fault of your own, you should judge things rationally and be grateful for the smooth-sailing moments. Cooper, the protagonist of the movie *Interstellar*, leaves us with these words: “Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean bad things will happen. It just means that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” This can be interpreted as meaning that when negative events occur—as they inevitably do, even if the probability is small—we should anticipate them and prepare countermeasures in advance.
