[MikeB]

The belief in luck influences a person insofar as it determines how much faith they place on the positive outcomes of their decisions. For example, if you were to wear a red t-shirt for 4 days, let's say monday, wednesday, saturday and sunday, and on each of those days you found a 10,000 yen note on the street. You might think that in some way wearing the red t-shirt helped you find the money, even if you don't understand how it might be true.

This is what's called in philosophy the correlation bias, it means that if you find a correlation between two things, you sometimes can make the mistake of believing there's a cause when in fact there is none. For example, rice as a crop started out in Asia, therefore Asian cuisine is more dependent on rice than European cuisine. It follows then that because rice is more popular in Asia, more people with naturally black hair will eat lots of rice, because that's what their used to. That doesn't mean that if you have black hair, you'll like rice any more or any less than any other person, it's just a question of exposure.

To see causation where there is none is a consequence of a psychological phenomena known as pareidolia. Perceiving patterns and causation where there is none. Because this is the way our brains are wired, this can and does influence decision making on a very basic level.