Key Points
•Historically, a strong work ethic forms the core of society’s belief. Gambling offers an alternative path to reward, to escape the drudgery of work.
•If a behaviour is rewarded, that behaviour is more likely to reoccur. This is called positive reinforcement.
•As the size of a reward increases, the likelihood of betting also increases. The hope of a reward is a very powerful one.
Watching the roulette table ball land in the pocket corresponding to black 26, an attractive young lady squeals with excitement (loud enough for everyone around her to look). She has won! The croupier places $25 chips next to an outside bet on the black section of the roulette table, and the young lady picks up her winnings (having doubled her $25). She is so excited she hugs her boyfriend and then tries to hug a nearby stranger.
An older European man, who just won nearly $2,000, barely utters a sound (in stark contrast to the young lady who sounded like she had won a million dollars). Some important psychological issues need to be discussed in order to understand the man’s lack of reaction. The young lady who squealed in excitement demonstrates the pleasure principle in its purest form — the joy and excitement experienced by the novice gambler receiving an unexpected reward from their first-time win.
The feeling of winning is exhilarating. When a person wins and receives a reward, the brain experiences a variety of chemical and physiological reactions. Neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, are released. This causes surges of feelings of pleasure, excitement and arousal. One of the most common reasons for gambling is the feeling people experience when they win. If the young lady repeats her $25 bet and wins a second or a third time, she will continue to feel that excited rush or “high” akin to that of being on drugs. As such, a reward is a powerful reinforcer.
Reinforcers occur naturally in the world. Spending a day at the beach, or eating a special meal, may produce pleasurable feelings. However, these things are neither predictable nor easy to do every time you want to feel happy. For example, the beach might be windy so you have to go home early because the sand is taking the skin off your legs. Conversely, a drink of alcohol, a win at the casino, or taking drugs can generate a happy feeling in a predictable fashion. Therefore, addictions are often the preferred method of generating good feelings on a reliable basis. Three drinks of alcohol will make you feel much the same way each time.
This first rule of behavioural psychology is that the frequency of a behaviour is likely to increase if that behaviour is rewarded. Therefore, having enjoyed the pleasurable experience, the young lady mentioned earlier is now more likely to place further bets. Having enjoyed the winning experience, her brain now wants to replicate it. As stated previously, human beings are designed at a basic level to remember things which are either pleasurable or painful. We want to remember the pleasurable things so that we can replicate them. We need to remember the negative things so that we can avoid them in the future. Brain scans show that not only do the temporal lobes (the parts of brain associated with memory) activate, other systems are also activated by high pleasure rewards.
The research on gambling shows that many people who have an early-stage big win, creating a sense of exhilaration, have a gambling problem or addiction in later life. Therefore, have a night of losses at the casino to avoid becoming a gambler. It’s not very exciting, but it is a good inoculation against future addiction. Conversely, if Madam Chance blesses you with early luck then you could be in trouble (that is, win once, especially a big win, and you will want to do it again).
Interestingly, casino games are designed to provide many small wins. Statistics suggest that in blackjack you will beat the house almost half the time. Therefore, in the space of 5 minutes you could have 15 wins. In roulette, if bet on 12 numbers inside you will have a win for every 3 spins. If you bet on red or black you might win nearly 50 per cent of the time (in probability you could lose 10 consecutive spins on roulette or win 8 hands in a row on blackjack). The wins do not need to be large (you might only receive the same money back) but the wins nevertheless establish the reward.
If the principle of reward was as simple win and then feel good, we would all do it again and again. It would also be easier to treat gamblers. However, there are several factors that complicate the situation. Linked to reward is a process called “habituation”. Habituation means that if the same reward is repeated, it will lose its powerfulness over time. In simple terms, if the excitement is repeated it becomes boring.
There are some reinforcers that are more powerful than others (money is pretty high on the list). However, the excitement from each win diminishes over time. If you were in the desert and nearly dying of thirst, you would pay anything for the first drink of water. After several glasses of water you may no longer have any desire for it. This is similar to the process of habituation, in that the water is the same but the value attached to it changes as circumstances change. When it comes to pleasurable things, rather than basic needs, this factor becomes even more notable. The pleasure derived from fun things diminishes as we get used to it. In the same way, a $25 win at the casino might be very exciting at first, but after many similar wins it loses it power.
You might argue that water is a basic need and the desire to have it will increase as thirst increases. That is true. For those things which are not basic needs, the pleasure initially derived from them will diminish unless stopped for a long time. Therefore, the young lady mentioned earlier would need to ensure that she enjoys her $25 win because habituation means that she will never feel that same excitement again.
When habituation takes place, what options are available? In simple terms, there are 2 ways to keep the power of the reward and make things interesting and exciting. Either find some other pleasurable thing or keep doing what you are doing but find another way of making it more pleasurable. The young lady has now had four or five $25 wins and she is no longer squealing with excitement. She then ups the stakes and places $100 on the red outside bet. When the ball bounces to a finish and lands on red 7, the squeal is piercing. When she suddenly wins another $100, she bets again. This keeps going until she gets used to winning $100. This is the moment when the fun of a night out shifts from recreation to gambling. If she leaves with her friends, she will have a happy memory. If she stays, she must overcome habituation.
The memory of the excitement of the wins, coupled with a potent cocktail of neurological chemicals, means that the young lady needs to push the high to a new level. As she watched the European man receiving stacks of money she might be tempted to experiment with a few chips in the centre of the layout hoping to get a payout of 35 to 1. If she does win, it will be far more adrenaline-charged than the $25 she won previously.
Alternatively, the young lady could move to blackjack to see if she can win there. Casinos intentionally have a dozen or more game variations. Whether or not she ultimately likes blackjack, it is an easy game to learn. She will try it if someone in her group tells her what to do. Later I will discuss the way in which different people are attracted to different games. The young lady will probably keep going until she finds a game that suits her personality. Having said that, as a young white female she is less likely to return. She will probably leave with her friends and go home before getting to this point!
I am fascinated by the way gambling alters a person’s perception of money. I spoke to a man in prison who explained how, in his non-gambling world, he had driven 20 minutes back to a shop to argue over a $2 error in change he’d received, yet he went to a casino and placed bets of up to $1,000 at a time (knowing that he might lose that money). The reward from the casino had become so intense that it overrode his normal beliefs about money, but only in relation to gambling. In other words, the
