[Terr_]

Culture is important, but it's widespread enough that there's probably a biological basis. Humans are wired to hate the idea of "good/bad things just happen", we're always creating stories about causation even when they might not be very accurate stories.

Consider how a game of flipping a coin seems to draw everyone—even people who took probability and statistics classes—into imagining "hot streaks" or "now I'm overdue for the other one."

[JohnMakin]

if you want to go down a rabbit hole, lots of its roots stem from protestantism, especially calvinism. that cultural influence is not unique to the us, but i don’t really subscribe to any evolutionary behavior explanations to attitudes like this, personally