Think again! According to the Associated Press Science, it's better when you actually earn your money. A study of the pleasure center in our brains shows that lottery winners, trust fund babies, and people who don't have to work for it, don't get nearly as much satisfaction from their money as people who earn it.

Researchers at Emory University measured brain activity in the striatum of 2 groups of volunteers. That's the part of the brain associated with reward processing and pleasure. One group had to work to receive money by playing a simple computer game and the other group was rewarded without having to earn it. The brains of the people who had to work for their money were more stimulated.

Gregory Berns is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science and he says that when you have to do things for your reward, it's clearly more important to the brain. Berns and other researchers think the study has broader real-world implications, especially in this age of "Who wants to be a millionaire?" and "The Apprentice." He points to a study done on lottery winners who aren't happier a year after their windfall. And a lot of studies prove that people get satisfaction from working hard for something.

Berns suggests that the brain was wired this way by nature. It wouldn't make sense to evolve to sit back on the couch and have things fall into our laps-- So it seems NOT winning the lottery isn't so bad after all.