Enjoying gambling responsibility can be a fun recreational activity. But new research indicates that the lights and sounds that go with a win on slot machines might increase your likelihood of making risky decisions that can lead to a gambling addiction.
A new study on gambling
Two researchers from the University of British Columbia set out to determine just how influential the lights and sounds on a slot machine can be on someone’s behavior.
They used the Iowa Gambling Task to simulate real-life decision-making and then had participants perform a two-choice lottery task.
Some of the study’s 131 participants were exposed to auditory and visual cues that mimic the bells and whistles that come with winning on standard slot machines. The researchers found that the participants who were exposed to these cues during the two-choice lottery task had a greater likelihood of making a high-risk decision. Specifically, their choices became riskier if the participants were shown images of stacks of money and heard extended casino jingles with greater wins.
“Our data directly demonstrate for the first time that reward-concurrent sensory cues can promote risky choice in human subjects,” explain the authors. “To our knowledge, this is the first direct demonstration of [the] risk-promoting effects of such cues in human subjects.”
Understanding the “why”
Part of the research included measuring pupil changes to determine if the participants were more around during a win (they were). In addition, the researchers charted the pupil’s eye movements and found that despite the probability information being presented on the screen, the audiovisual cues prevented the participants from properly incorporating the odds of winning into their risky behavior.
Overall, the researchers were able to conclude that the lights and sounds on the gambling machines:
- increased the pleasure of a win
- hampered the participants’ ability to weigh the risks
- increased the chance that they’d take greater risks.
