Human Brain and Slots Study

Written by Haylie | Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Recently, a study was conducted on how near misses (or near wins) encourage continued gambling for slots players. The volunteer subjects were hooked up to an MRI scan while they played a simplified slot machine. A second set of subjects were not hooked up to the MRI, but were asked to rate their near misses. They reported that near misses were unpleasant events for them, but at the same time, their desire to keep playing was greater.

The study was conducted by Dr. Luke Clark from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, who believes this urge to keep playing is quite the paradox, though it does make great sense for casinos. He says, “Gamblers often interpret near-misses as special events, which encourage them to continue to gamble. Our findings show that the brain responds to near-misses as if a win has been delivered, even though the result is technically a loss.

“On games where there is some skill involved, like target practice, it makes sense to pay attention to near-misses. However, on gambling games where the wins are random, like slot machines or roulette, near-misses do not signal your future success. Importantly, our volunteers in this study were not regular or problem gamblers and so these findings suggest that the brain may naturally respond to near-misses in this way.”

So, next time you hit a near miss at an online slot machine, stop and analyze your desire to continue playing. Is it greater than an otherwise far-miss spin? Perhaps it’s similar to that feeling when you seem to be so close, and just one more spin will definitely be the one. Don’t forget, though, that online slot games, and land-based slots for that matter, are all dictated by that Random Number Generator that generates a different random number every mili-second that you play. It’s just like the common notion many slots player have at land-based casinos that if someone sits at a slot game for a long period of time and doesn’t hit, then the next person to sit down at that game will take their jackpot. This belief is of course hogwash because no two spins could ever be identical. That’s the randomness of the RNG. Furthermore, no spin is ever related to another. Each spin is individual and unique, unaffected by any other.

Source:
http://www.online-casinos.com/news/news8423.asp

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