One-Armed Bandits: The Science of Slot Machines

You may call it a slot machine, a fruit machine or a one-armed bandit, but the reality is the same: an algorithmically precise machine designed to drain the human gambler of all his or her earnings. Where did these insidious machines come from? How do they ensorcell us? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the science and psychology of slot machine gambling behavior.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Step right up, Step right up, ladies
and gentlemen, test your skills and test your wits against
the incredible one armed band at the fruit machine, the

(00:23):
Puggy of the three eyed savings buster. Yes, sir, ree,
you sink your coins, you pull the bar and dance
with Lady Luck. Remember that when you play a slot machine,
no strategy is required. The slot machine is controlled by
a mathematical algorithm program to deliver a set number of
winds the set number of losses. It's just you against

(00:44):
the godless predetermined mine of the machine. So step right
up and take your chances. How about you, sir? Right there,
why don't you step on up and try your hand
at the wom bandit here? Oh wow, yeah, I say this,
Look it sure does, sir. Just put your coin in there,
pull the bar to see what Lady Luck has in
store for you. Really, really, just one coin and I
could be rich forever. That's how it stocks. So you

(01:06):
just put in one coin and uh, we'll see how
the algorithm treats you. Okay, am I playing it right now.
You're playing it right now, that's right. So just pulled
the liver pull it yet there you go. Oh well
I didn't work out for you this time. Do you
have some more coins? Well, I sure do. I don't
want to lose out on a chance to get ritch.
All right, Well you might want to get a bucket

(01:27):
off them, so because this algorithm, it's a it's a
fickle guys. Okay, well let me go to them. Hey,
welcome to stuff to blow your mind. This is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was just a
little sketch we put together to uh to set the

(01:47):
stage for our discussion of slot machines and the science
of slot machines and in fact that the science of
gambling behavior. Yeah, Robert, have you ever played a slot machine?
I have never played an actual slot machine outside of
interactions and video games, not gambling video games, but like
legitimate like Grand Theft Auto or of course Super Mario

(02:09):
Brothers too. So you're not betting real cash money on
these slot machines. Absolutely not the sort of virtual gambling
right well, especially like Supermried Brothers too comes to mind,
because if anyone my age may remember, in between each
level you played a little slot device and it was
all about winning extra lives. So that's the only slot

(02:29):
experience you have. It gives you a very skewed idea
of what a slot machine is because you could not
lose anything. You could only win extra lives, and it
paid out at a pretty high percentage. It was pretty
easy to to figure out when to press the button
so that you would at least get one extra life.
Oh but so there's some skill involved in the Super
Mario Brothers Too slot machine, and that's going to be
different than most slot machines in history. That's right as

(02:52):
well discussed. They've evolved into a very nefarious parasitic organism,
mechanical organism, if you will. I think slot machines are
very interesting because in this world of uh, you know,
unmanned planetary rovers, of robotic surgery machines, of all these

(03:12):
incredibly uh science fiction seeming machines that that occupy our
techno space, the slot machine exists as a really kind
of perfect mechanism that stands beyond all of that other
technology in that it has a job to do and
it does it so well you wouldn't believe it. Yeah,

(03:33):
I mean it in the industry has has pushed it
in this direction to where it just excels at one thing,
and that is making money off the gambler for the
house and ultimately encouraging you two in. In gambling industry terms,
play to extinction, which which is the idea that you
put some money in and you keep putting money in

(03:54):
until you can no longer put money in because you
don't have anymore, which is a tactic you you don't
even see all that much in a parasitic organism because
the parasite generally does not want to extinguish the host.
The host is its is its vessel. But as we're
discussing earlier, there are always more vessels for the slot machine. Yeah,

(04:15):
you can look at the casino as a kind of
super parasite because it doesn't have to attach itself to
a host and then become dependent on it. It can
draw many hosts to itself and there's always more where
they came from. Yeah, it's and and they will bust
them in. They will attract those gamblers in with whatever
it takes. And you know, you instantly think of you know,

(04:36):
busses coming in with them, of travel deals, you know,
even like free room and board. I was looking at
a two thousand, twelveth study from Temple University, and they
pointed out that an average casino in Atlantic City could
expect to make eight dollars and forty five cents off
of every dollar they spent on their travel and parking
promotions for gamblers. So again, free bus rides, free parking,

(04:57):
UHI for every dollar they spend. And so it's a
much better deal though compared to the two fifty one
return on every dollar they spent on room, food and
beverage giveaways. But that's still pretty good, still really good.
So for every dollar they give away in free hotel rooms,
free buffet trips, and stuff like that, they get back

(05:19):
to one on gambling losses. Yeah, and so that's just
one early stat to just sort of drive home how
how the system works, how the gambling hyper organism works. Well,
let's look at the history of the slot machine. I
got curious about where this thing came from, and it
turns out the term slot machine could originally refer to

(05:41):
any coin operated machine, like a like a vending machine.
So it's got a slot where you stick the coin in,
it falls in and you get what you're looking for. Yeah,
it was slot machine. Is short for nickel and the
slot machine, which is probably the most Grampa Simpson thing
I've ever heard outside of the cartoon, because yeah, it
could be anything, could be gum cigarett et that right,
you would say, oh, you you know, you wanna know

(06:02):
the package. I'm go over to that nickel in the
slot machine and do what comes naturally and then yell
at a cloud. So yeah, and in the twentieth century
that that's sort of when we saw the shift to
slot machine referring to a gambling type machine. Though I
do think it's interesting to still in a way characterized
slot machines as vending machines because you could look at

(06:23):
them as a vending machine for thrills you put the
coin in because you're not going to be getting the
money back. It's almost no chance of winning money at
a slot machine. Yeah, and it has far too many
bells and whistles and flashing lights on it to really
be an investment machine. Like it's you know, to the
to the slot machines. In the slot machines defense, it is,

(06:47):
it does seem to position itself as an entertainment device. Yeah.
So in the eighteen eighties there were some bars and
saloons in the United States that had early versions of
coin operated gambling machines, though I think generally they were
not much like the slot machines we think of today.
So they might be something like a tiny mechanical horse

(07:09):
race and that would give patrons something to bet on
and eventually shoot each other about. So like basically a
little automaton with racing horses that you would with that
money and maybe life and death over. Yeah, that's just
one example. But it would be some kind of electronic
or not electronic, but a mechanical machine that you could
use to gamble with, and the patrons might place bets

(07:31):
against one another or sometimes they could like collect payments
in the form of things like drinks or tobacco from
the saloon operator where the machine was housed. Yeah, it
was reading about this, and it almost seems to hearken
to a simpler time. It actually reminds me more of
like trivia nights. The encounter at bars now where with
a proprietor paid off winning customers with drinks or cigars

(07:53):
or or tokens for more refreshments, you know, which is
you know kind of like you go to these trivia
nights and if you win, oh you get like, you know,
twenty dollars in drinks or something. You know. Yeah, it's
to get people in the door, you know. And and
in these cases you weren't always necessarily playing against the machine.
In some cases the machine might be thought of more
like a complicated pair of dice. Now, the kind of

(08:14):
slot machines we really think of, the reels running through
their cycles and then eventually landing to line up. And
I'll talk about the specifics there in a minute. Where
did that come from? There is apparently some dispute about
what exactly counts as the first slot machine or who
should be given the title of inventor. But the first
major producer of the slot machines of the kind we

(08:36):
think of today was a San Francisco mechanic originally an
immigrant from Bavaria named Charles Faye, and in the eighteen
nineties he invented a series of machines, the first one
called the four eleven forty four machine, then the card Bell,
and then the Liberty Bell because it's all about freedom.

(08:57):
And there are also accounts that Faye said actually ripped
off the idea from another inventor named Gustav Schultz who
created a nickel slot machine called horse Shoes in the
early eighteen nineties I think eighteen nine three. And from
what I can tell, Schultz's machine only had one reel
at a time, so he really hadn't tapped into the
three real magic yet. I like how it seems like

(09:19):
either way, the roots that the of the slot machine
may descend back to Bavarian cuckoo clocks and uh, you know,
old German automatons. Yeah, it's beautiful. And also I've read
some interesting things about the the idea of intellectual property
in the origins of slot machines, because these early producers

(09:39):
and you know, manufacturers of slot machines were ripping each
other off all the time. But I mean, what could
you do about it? I want to take you to
court to you know, to sue your patent infringement on
my illegal machine. Yeah, so we should we should probably
really describe the slot machine for anyone who's not that
familiar with it. I mean, outside of course of our
you know, of our nival Barker's get an opening of

(10:01):
the epithete. Yeah, we assume you've probably seen one, but
just in case you haven't, it looks usually like this,
or at least traditionally like this. You've got a big
mechanical box in front of you, and it has a
coin slot and a lever and a series of reels
with images on them. Usually three reels, but though that
can vary in different machines of today. Uh. And they're

(10:24):
kind of like the number wheels on a combination lock.
You know, they can scroll through, usually vertically scroll through,
and when you pull the lever, the reels begin to
spin wildly before eventually slowing down and stopping, And the
reels are full of images, also referred to as stops.
And what you're looking for is which images line up

(10:46):
when the reel stop spinning, and they line up across
the line that's called the pay line. Typically, of course,
you want the three reels on the images to match,
though different machines have different payout combination schemes. Sometimes there's
one image that pays you something no matter what, every
time it shows up. And the question is what are
the odds of a match? So, assuming the images or

(11:07):
stops on all the reels are weighted the same, it
actually should be a pretty simple multiplication of probability. So
I came up with an example, Let's say you're playing
an Alien themed machine. It's a three reel slot machine
modeled after the cast of the movie Alien, So it
has eight stops per real, one for each of the
seven crew members of the Nostromo and one for the alien.

(11:30):
And the way you'd calculate the probability of of hitting
a jackpot of lining up three images on this would
be one eighth because there are eight stops, times one
eighth times one eight three times for the three reels,
which leaves you a probability of one out of five
hundred and twelve. So let's say you get that one
chance out of five hundred and twelve, you get three

(11:50):
Ripley's or something. If you do, the machine pays out,
usually by dumping the coins inside, either all of them
or some established sub that of them, into a place
where you can collect them and then promptly begin putting
them back in the machine one time. I love this
idea for a slot machine because it also involves essentially

(12:11):
a parasitic life destroying organism, and I know, wonderful uh
anthemomorphizing sci fi analogy. The implications of the parasitism did
not escape me when I dreamed this up. But yeah,
so the mechanical spinning reels on early slot machines did
not usually have the cast of alien in them. They
had images like playing suit symbols, so you know, like

(12:32):
playing cards, spade, club, heart, diamond, the classic iconography of gambling.
They also had horseshoes, stars, and bells. I was wondering
where did all the fruit come from? Yeah, because that
I think that even one cherries? What are they? Sometimes
grapes or plums or something pineapples? Why are these things

(12:53):
in the slot machines we think of today? Even I
think in the UK slot machines are often referred to
as fruit machines. Fruit machines. Well, I read an interesting
story about the origin of this. Apparently because of the
moral stigma of gambling in the early days of the
early nineteen hundreds, there were frequent attempts to ban or
eliminate slot machines, and there were lots of sneaky attempts

(13:15):
to circumvent this. So companies would come up with a
slot machine that wasn't exactly like the other slot machines
that came before, and somewhat trying to trying to find
a loophole around the law, or at least around the
easy enforcement of the law. And in nineteen o nine,
a company called the Industry Novelty Company built slot machines
but called them chewing gum dispensers, with the fruit symbols

(13:39):
corresponding to flavors of gum could win as your pay out,
though some of these fruit dispensing slot machines might also
sometimes pay out in coins. The year after that nineteen
o nine machines, in nineteen ten, the Mills Novelty Company
added a picture of a chewing gum pack to their
machine reels, and apparently this image morphed into the bar

(14:00):
or symbol that we all recognized today on slot machines. Yeah,
it's interesting. I was also reading how the the the
gum machine aspect of the slot machines also, if all,
allowed the machines to roll back into a more legal
form when laws changed. So, the San Francisco earth Quade
of nineteen oh six destroyed most local slot machine manufacturers,

(14:22):
and California banded the use of slot machines altogether in
nineteen eleven um and so to stay in business, the
manufacturers revamped the slot machines as gum vending machines. So
it's it's they're almost kind of like transformers, um shifting
in and out of acceptable forms. Right. So, of course,
the original machines were all mechanical. This was before the

(14:43):
days of electronics, and they'd have you know, mechanical systems
gears in place that would try to to pay out
the correct amounts to keep the probabilities in check. Later
that became easier when you had electro mechanical machines, especially.
I think adding electron onyx eliminated some of the possibility
that people could kind of mess with the machines and

(15:07):
machine right to add an element of skill that isn't
supposed to be there. Uh. There are stories, I don't
know how accurate they are that back in the old days,
if you knew how to pull the lever just right
and twist the machine just right, you could ensure a payout.
I don't know if that's true, but but apparently people
thought so. Though maybe people think that about the machines
today and they're quite wrong. Yeah, it's it's gonna say that.

(15:30):
You can easily imagine that in the sort of almost
magical thinking that goes into the theological nature of the gambler. Yeah,
and of course, now the machines tend to be fully electronics,
so they've got computerized logic random number generators and they're
perfect now, so they manage payouts always within the correct
probability ranges. More widely today, computerized slot machines are a

(15:52):
subtype of electronic gaming machines. And what role do they
play in the gambling of today? Now? When you think
of a casino, chances are I bet you think of
a slot machine. Yeah, because you think of that just
that big like that big room that's filled with them,
just a perfect the grid of slot machines, and they're

(16:14):
various human hosts. Yeah, it's almost like a like a
grocery store aisle. People just line up to Now, have
you used one of these machines before? I actually have. I.
I have been to a casino once in Tunica, Mississippi. Uh,
And I didn't play the machines very much. I mean
I played a very little bit on them, but I

(16:37):
observed a lot of people playing the machines. And it's
very interesting watching the phenomenon of how people behave, like
their posture and their facial expressions while they're using slot machines.
I I know we're going to talk about this in
a bit that people often report that they understand that
the odds are against them on these machines and use

(17:00):
the machines for enjoyment and entertainment. But when you watch
people play them, very often you don't see much excitement
or or reaction. People very often appear sort of hypnotize.
They're locked in the zone, They're not blinking much, their
faces are kind of expression less, and they're just working

(17:21):
the machine. Yeah, it makes me wonder, like what my
face looks like when I'm playing a video game. I
thought about that too, But but but even then, I
know that I have at times found myself playing a
game where I asked myself, am I enjoying this? Or
is this just become a tedious thing that I have
to win at in order to call it a day?

(17:41):
And you forgot there was a life outside the game. Yeah,
And I feel like maybe that's the mindset that one
can fall into with a slot machine. Yeah. Now, I've
never actually tried one out, not a real one outside
of the video games, but I have seen the rooms,
so I know a little bit of about what you're
talking about here. Well, maybe this will prevent us from

(18:03):
ever getting a good casino sponsorship on this show in
the future. But I can attest that they're not really
that rewarding. And I mean indeed, when you look at
the payback percentage, which again is tied. Yeah, I'm inant emotional,
and of course, of course materially they're not that rewarding
because when you look at the payback percentage, which again

(18:24):
is determined by an algorithm, um, you see varying levels
of payout. Like some of the sources I was looking at,
it was between seventy and Yeah, one of the main
studies we're going to talk about in this episode side
at nine percent. I've seen common percentages more like eighty
something percent to and in the US, I at least

(18:45):
get the sense that this often seems connected to state regulations.
I think some states say your slot machines in the
state need to pay between this number and this note.
They can only be so evil, um. But it's important
to note that any payback percentage under it implies that
people who play more at the slot machine lose more money. Yeah,
So if you sat down and just continued putting infinite

(19:08):
amounts of money into this machine and never left it.
You would always statistically come out behind. You would play
to extinction exactly right. So what role do slot machines
play in the in the larger picture of the gambling
economy today. I think it's interesting that, according to what
I've read, slot machines used to be a sort of

(19:28):
entertaining diversion to keep people in your saloon drinking your beverages.
And then after that, after they were employed in casinos,
they seem to have served as a kind of low
stakes alternative to the traditional casino games, you know, the
table games like blackjack, craps, and poker. Slot machines don't
require any skill. You don't have to study probabilities, you

(19:50):
don't have to count cards, you don't have to learn
how to bluff uh. And you also you don't have
as much intimidating personal interaction, like you don't have to
square off against that scary, ice cold professionalism of the
blackjack dealer, and you don't have to worry about the
predatory menace of the other poker players who are trying
to get your pot. It's a great um gut gateway.

(20:12):
It's like I'm walking in here, I'm a newcomer. I
have no idea what gambling consists of. But here's this
machine where even if I humiliate myself, it's just between
me and the machine. Yeah, and it's so easy. You
just pull a lever or you press a button. Then
you watch the colors settle into place. And it doesn't
require a large bet at least not all at once.
It's it feels safe and cheap to start out at least.

(20:35):
But of course, now slot machines are huge business. Yeah.
I was reading that it's estimated that slot machines generate
over se of the average casinos income, so more than
all the table games and roulette, blackjack, uh, you know, craps, poker. Yeah,
they it's it's it's really like an evolution, this thing
that started off. It's just this mere diversion becomes the

(20:59):
driving uh force in in casino economy. Yeah, and I
wonder what the explanation for that is, Like, is there
just something inherent to the slot machine model that is
very alluring, or is that that slot machines as machines
have been improved and improved until they're just the most

(21:21):
perfect place to gamble in a casino. Essentially, are are
slot machines of today more advanced than the blackjack tables
of today. Yeah, I think they are. I mean, because
it's it's so, it's so dependent on the technology in
the in the delivery of the user experience. I can't
help but think of it in terms of of done.

(21:41):
Since I'm reading, are re reading done right now? Update
to the listeners. I'm almost done with done. I've got
like fifty pages left, probably gonna finish it tonight. Oh excellent. Well,
I can't help but think of this in terms of
the the whole prohibition against thinking machines and the doing universe,
the Barian Jahad where you know, they wipe out um
Theking machines, and it's it's it seems as much my

(22:03):
interpretation of it, it seems as much about like destroying
a machine like way of thinking and using machines to
be human. But but in that world you can't have
thinking computers anymore. So instead you have mentats. You have
humans that are essentially human computers that can you know,
can compute large numbers and various factors inside their own head.

(22:26):
The blackjack dealer is a mentat, Yeah, he or she is,
and also a mentet is the card counter who walks
into the casino and then is asked to leave the
casino when it's revealed that they are winning through pure
logic and through mental ability. So it's so that's that's
not allowed. The human um uh perfection of thought is

(22:49):
not allowed within the casino. But the slot machine is
the mechanical, the electronic perfection of thought, and that is
of course allowed by house rules to do its Damach, Well,
you can't count car. It's at a slot machine. That's true.
There's no way to beat the machine. And this is
something that's going to come up in the research we
sit in a bit. People who think they have a
way to beat the machine are wrong. Some people might

(23:11):
think this way, but they're wrong. You can't beat the machine.
It is a mindless, completely unchangeable algorithm. No way of
pressing the button, no ritual you can perform, or or
a way you can jiggle the bottom of the machine.
Nothing's gonna change it, you know, real quick. I do
want to mention that that when it comes to payback

(23:32):
on a machine, that the idea of the jackpot uh
wasn't invited until nineteen sixteen UM, and that that's when
we have this idea that the machine will spit out
all of its coins if you get that that very
lucky combination. And of course, multiplying on the idea of
the jackpot, you've got these modern conceptions of something like
the super jackpot. Multiple machines are all contributing to this

(23:54):
huge number that eventually somebody's gonna win. It's kind of
like playing the lottery. You know, it's a small investment
and it's maybe not even a medium sized payout. Maybe
maybe you could get that gigantic payout that will set
you up for life. Yeah, and that just plays into
the nefarious nature of the machine, right, that you have
this this almost legendary mythological payout that's possible by manipulating

(24:19):
this one device. Yeah, I mean, I wonder how high
these uh, these super jackpots can get. Um, there was
one in two thousand three, according to my notes, that
paid out at nearly forty million dollars, so not bad. Yeah,
and uh, of course then again you think of that
payout and that sounds huge, but remember that the machine

(24:40):
never really loses, so just imagine how much money it
guzzled for that to be an acceptable payout, which also
then of course adds to the mythology of what kind
of payout the average gambler might expect. Well, it's just
another version of thinking, man, how can this casino afford
to give me a free room and a free buffet? Yeah,

(25:00):
because you're you're paying a triple for it at least. Yeah. Well, anyway,
we've we've reached a point in the history of gambling
where slot machine play is now considered one of the
most addictive forms of gambling. It is powerful, it's insidious,
it knows exactly how to work us. We're not playing
the slot machines, they're playing us. One great example is

(25:23):
that we we looked at one study that showed that
we don't we're not even aware that we're losing necessarily
when we play certain slot machines. Right, that's right. Yeah,
there's a two thousand eleven paper titled Losses Disguised as
Winds in Modern multi line video slot Machines. And this
was published in the journal Addiction. And so the main

(25:44):
none of this is that so your novice player, you
walk in, you check out one of these slot machines,
and then all these bells and whistles and lights and
cartoon characters and pharaohs. You know, what have you just
flashing at you? And uh, And it's giving you, you know,
a sense of emotional arouse all when you win. But
it's also giving you a sensitive emotional arousal, arousal even

(26:05):
when you're losing money, because for instance, let's say you
put in I probably have the amounts here wrong. But
let's say you put in fifty cents into the machine, right,
and then uh, and then woe celebration. Lights are flashing,
horns are are are are blaring because you just won cents. Yeah,
you actually you lost money, but the machine is celebrating

(26:28):
it and giving you an emotional arousal based on your loss.
Was disguising your loss as a win. And then you
keep going because now you're just more invested. So you
have these machines that allow you to make five bets
at the same time, and say you win on one
of them and it pays back double. You're you're still behind,
you're still losing, but you you won something. Yeah, You're
you're doing pretty good, you know, Yeah, so you just

(26:50):
put some more coins in. But another type of study
I wanted to talk about, and this sellectually referred to
some older studies that I think are sort of foundational
in the the history of gambling studies is about the
irrationality of gambling, what's going on in the mind of
the gambler. So here's the situation. Unless you are incredibly

(27:11):
skilled at a perhaps certain type of game where your
skills give you an edge over the odds. This might
be something like poker, where you're playing against other players,
not necessarily against the house, where the odds are set
against you. Though even in this case this is going
to be somewhat debatable. You probably think you're a better
poker player than you actually are. You're probably not really
the nintat threat that you think you are. Not You

(27:33):
are not the through fear how out of poker. Walking
into a casino is almost never a good investment, unless
you're just planning to scam a free buffet and not
playing games. There's a reason casinos make money. As we've said,
the odds are always against you. The long term probabilities
always favor the house. But slot machines are a really,

(27:54):
really especially unlikely way to get a payoff. And furthermore,
this should not be news to anybody, because everybody knows
the odds are against them. Yeah, it's not a secret
that the slot machines are a poor use of your
your time and money. Yeah. Yeah. And so if your
goal is a gambler is to, let's say, knowingly, spend

(28:15):
a little money just to have an experience, you know,
maybe to feel the thrill of a risk and chase
the ghost of a win, that might make some sense.
But if your goal is to make money, and for
many slot machine players and gamblers in general, this does
seem to be the goal, you are acting irrationally. There's
not there's not a different perspective about it. The odds

(28:36):
are against you. It's a mathematical truth that you are
being irrational and you're going to lose. So what is
the thinking of a slot machine player look like who's
in this situation? Historically studies have looked into this, but
it's kind of a difficult problem because how do you
judge what's going on in a gambler's head while he
or she is gambling. This is especially difficult because you

(28:59):
can't necessary fairly expect people to reflectively self report their
attitudes and thought processes accurately. You know, if you ask
people after a gambling session, you know, did you expect
to win. They might be rationalizing losses by saying no, no,
I know, it's just for entertainment, or they might not
even realize what cognitive processes are governing their behavior while

(29:22):
they're sitting at the machine. Yeah, and it's almost kind
of like if you were to quiz somebody about their
late night browser history in the in the light of
the waking day, you know that, because they're going to
be a little removed from who they were when they
were browsing those particular sites. Uh, there's kind of you know,
a like a depressurization, uh, to some to various experiences

(29:43):
in life where you you kind of let yourself become
seduced by, say the lights and the environment at the casino,
and and being the gambler as opposed to the individual
who's just you know, quizzed about his or her gambling
on the street the next day. And that's not even
factoring in any feeling the shame or regret you might have. Sure,
and I mean, yeah, I think it's worth thinking about.

(30:05):
Is really being in another state of mind? I mean,
can you always remember exactly how you were thinking when
you were on drugs? There have been several studies that
used a method that tried to get it the thinking
the cognition of of people who were in the act
of gambling by using a method we might call the
speaking allowed approach. And one often cited study of this

(30:27):
kind is from and it's called Irrational Thinking among Slot
Machine Players from the Journal of Gambling Studies by Michael B.
Walker of the University of Sydney. So this is an
older study, but I think the results are still interesting
and worth talking about because it's often cited in the field.
So the experiment was researchers recruited twenty seven university students

(30:47):
who regularly played one of three types of electronic games.
So you had people who played slot machines, you had
people who played video poker they called video draw poker,
and then they played another group played what they called
video amusement games, which from what I could tell, I
think just meant video games like arcade games without a

(31:09):
gambling component. That makes sense because yeah, we would keep
thinking about like slot machines versus video games. That makes
sense that that would be uh, that would be the comparison. Yeah,
And so the participants broke down as nine slot machine players,
eight video poker players and nine video amusement players, assuming
that just means like arcade game players, and all the

(31:29):
players played each of the three types of games for
twenty or thirty minutes, starting with their preferred game for
thirty minutes. So slot machine player played slot machines for
thirty minutes uh, and then went on to play the
other types of games for thirty or twenty minutes. And
they were instructed to explain their thoughts out loud to
a microphone tape recorder while they were playing. The exact

(31:53):
instructions were and a quote, we want to know how
you're playing the game. We want you to talk all
the time, so we know what you are thinking about
while you were playing the game. When you are ready,
we will begin recording. So they recorded them talking while
they were gambling or playing the video game, and then
afterwards they listen to these to these recordings, and they

(32:15):
categorized all the statements that people made into five different types.
One was descriptive, so this is the player just describing
what's happening. One is rational, and this is a statement
of strategy that is correct or optimal with respect to
winning in relation to the structure of the game. That's
how they described it. The other one would be irrational,

(32:36):
So this is a statement of strategy that is incorrect
or is or it's an attempt to influence the outcome
of the game in a way that won't actually work
the way that they said is inappropriate. Um. The other
is emotional, that's just expressing feelings. And then they had
a category for other like nonverbal vocalizations for I guess
when you just say like so irrational example, that would

(33:00):
be like if I were to say, all right, it's
gotta it's gonna pay out, it's gotta pay out, like
next next time, I've just lost so much, it's I've
got to win the next one. Yeah, that that'd be
a great example. Another example of irrational thinking was anthropomorphizing
or personalizing the machine, so saying things like come on baby,
or come to mama, or you owe me, or you

(33:22):
pay me and I'll pay you. Those were all quoted
in the study. You pay me, I'm going to reset
the tellective to bargain. Yeah, exactly, you can't bargain with
the machine. Let me reprogram you with my mind. Um. So,
once the statements were categorized, the results indicated that the
highest rate of irrational statements were produced by slot players

(33:43):
playing slot machines, and the lowest were amusement gamers playing
their video games. So people were much more likely to
produce irrational statements if they were regular slot machine players
playing slot machines. Currently interesting, like, I'm thinking back on
video game playing that I've done in the past, and
I can definitely remember times where it stops being fun

(34:05):
and it begins about it begins to be just about
like beating the level, and even uh, you know, applying
some level of irrational and emotional thought to it, you know,
and and and anthropomorphizing the game in ways that go
beyond merely getting into character or story. Yeah, though much
more often the people playing regular video games were making
rational statements about strategy. They're saying like, oh, I think

(34:26):
I need to jump on that thing, or you know,
it's something that's actually rational with respect to what's happening
in the game. And I'm just going to read a
quote about their results. So they said, out of all
the statements made by slot machine players when playing slot machines,
thirty eight percent were categorized as irrational. Furthermore, eighty percent
of strategic statements made by slot machine players while playing

(34:49):
slot machines were categorized as irrational. Though I think one
interesting uh qualification of this is what rational statements about
strategy g could you make while playing a slot machine?
Because I mean you can you can make a few.
I mean, I guess you can just say, I guess
I'll play double bets this time, as long as you're

(35:10):
not indicating that you think you are controlling outcomes when
you're not, or something like that. But and so many
of those irrational statements are going to play directly into
the mythology of the slot machine. You know where it's
where the mythology of the slot machine is that if
you you double down and you keep playing, that it's
going to pay off. Yeah. And so another study published
in two thousand in the Journal of Psychology was called

(35:32):
Predictors of Irrational Thinking and regular slot machine players, and
it followed up on these results testing more slot machine
gamblers with that same talk allowed method. Though I think
it's worth mentioning at this point that both of these
studies called out the potential limitations of the talk allowed method,
like the requirement to talk aloud about a game, since

(35:55):
it's an unnatural activity could be skewing results or subjective
attitude and the participants. You always want to be careful
about these kind of things that you might be getting
incorrect feedback because of the test conditions, but at least
with that qualification in mind. Uh. This study was generally
consistent with the previous findings, and they showed that strategic

(36:17):
statements made about slot machine gaming were very often irrational.
Of all statements made were irrational, and seventy percent of
all game related or strategic verbalizations were irrational. And then
I thought this was really interesting. They offered different categories
of irrational statements and showed what percentage of irrational statements

(36:39):
they made up. So one category they had was like
superstitious rituals, hypotheses or predictions. So this is would be
like I gotta run my, my, my, my rabbit's foot right,
had I need to lit the machine before I play it? Right?
These are all just false strategies of thinking you can
influence the outcomes of the machine or or addictions based

(37:01):
on things that that had no validity. Say so like
the gambler's fallacy I think would be part of this,
and like oh if I've just lost a bunch of
times in a row, I'm do. And this was of
all irrational statements, so this is a lot of them.
Another one that I thought was really interesting was the
category called inappropriate rationalization of near misses. And the way

(37:23):
they explained this was they said, these statements classified as
irrational implied the player believed the machine was cheating or
stopping them from winning by not providing all the winning symbols.
And that's that's interesting because it kind of gets to
the heart of it. But it's like the machine. Yes,
the machine is cheating you, but it's cheating you in
a very systematic way, not in this clumsy way that

(37:45):
you're attributing right exactly, So they're calling out capricious cheating
when actually it's very methodical cheating. The other big category
was personification of the machines of all irrational statements, and
this is what it sounds like. It's any statement where
the players trying to make a bargain with the machine
or attribute thoughts or emotions to it, or sometimes like

(38:07):
yelling insults at the machine. These were also classified as irrational.
And then the other twelve percent were statements that were
belief in personal luck. Yes, though A thing I thought
was interesting was they said they didn't find any references
to personal skill, So at least the gamblers weren't saying
things that suggested that they thought skill was involved in

(38:29):
the playing of slot machines. Yeah, tell them almost more
like a religious act, Like the slot machine becomes this,
uh this, uh, this this metaphor for our interaction with
the world and with our life. Yeah. I think that's
definitely a good way of putting it there. There are
hidden forces at work, and so they were looking for

(38:50):
correlated predictors of irrationality in this study. They're like, okay,
are there are other conditions that if these hold, you're
more likely to see irrational behavior sitting in front of
the slot machine. And uh So, one thing they look
for and did not find as a correlation between the
percentage of winds and irrationality. So it doesn't matter how
much you win, that doesn't change how irrational you are.

(39:12):
They did find a correlation between risk taking in irrationality.
The players who bet more at a time and took
higher risks generated more irrational statements in general. Uh, though
not necessarily when analyzed specifically with regard to strategic statements.
Just the general statements. But from both of these studies,
there's an ongoing tension between the fact that slot machine

(39:34):
gamblers often seem to display irrational behaviors while they're in
the act. So you're sitting there in front of the
slot machine gambling and you're being irrational, but then when
you're not in the act of playing, you report rational
attitudes towards the activity. So after you get out of
the casino and you're giving a survey, you know you're

(39:55):
you're answering questions about the act of gambling. You will
say thing things that indicate you realize it's pure chance,
you're likely to lose, you're not likely to win money.
You have no way of influencing the machine. I don't know.
I think that's interesting, like the disconnect between our cognition
while we're playing and our cognition when we're not playing. Yeah,

(40:16):
I mean, it's almost like you're in source old, right,
It's like talking to the sailor who gets dragged into
the water by the siren every day and on the shore,
he's like, yeah, I know that she's part fish and
that she's basically just hypnotizing me and trying to drag
me to a watery death. Um, I know all that stuff.
Why do you wind it when we have to drag
you out of the water every day? Why? Why? Why

(40:37):
does it if you continue to control you though? Yeah,
there was an interesting paper that I just looked at
briefly from two thousand ten that referred to exactly this disconnect,
to this going back and forth between modes of cognition,
and referred to it as double switching. But that's of
course just looking at the mind of the gambler. Another
element that very much comes into gambling is looking at

(40:59):
not crely the mind, but the perceived mind of the machine. Yes,
this is really interesting, And there's a two thousand fifteen
study just came out from the University of Milano but Coca,
from researchers Paolo Riva, Simona Sacchi, and Marco Brambilla. And
there's actually a great quote in here that invokes another

(41:20):
mythological creature. They say it is possible that similar to
how in ancient mythology, challengers perceived the sphinx as possessing
a human like mind and intelligence, the gambling industry is
selling customers a challenge against a mind rather than just
a machine or a computer algorithm. So it's the best
of both worlds. It's like you get to combine the

(41:42):
safety and low stakes and and kind of comfort zone
aspects of the slot machine with the thrill of playing
against another player in poker. Right. Yeah, it's um And
so we've we've mentioned personifying the machine already, So this
paper is not the first to discuss us anthropomorphization and
uh and slot machine gambling. No, like I said, in

(42:04):
those earlier papers, they found personifying the machine was very common. Yeah,
but this is the this is the first to really,
um look at how anthromorpism plays into the excitement engagement
level and how it affects, uh, how much money you
end up losing in the venture. Yeah. I know I've seen,
especially based on some of the stuff you dug up,
that past designs of slot machines have very much tried

(42:26):
to suggest humanity in just the look and feel of
the machine. Yeah, the like the paper mentioned, Oh yeah,
you'll you'll see these slot machines and they'll have pharaohs
and women and muscleman on them, and that's all well
and good. But I was not expected to find what
I found when I was looking in Getty images uh
a nineteen two. Uh, I believe image of a blonde bombshell,

(42:50):
which is essentially imagine a kind of a Marilyn Monroe
looking pin up mannequin. And then it's just a slot
machine that they slide into her torso and she's just
stand ing. It's horrified. Yeah, it's she's just standing in
a I believe it was a Death Valley, California bar
gas station or something. Now, is this a a sexualized
figure of a woman that just happens to have a

(43:12):
lever poking out of it? Or is the lever like
her arm or something? Oh, no, it's just a lever.
It's like it's it's it's like it's it's almost as
if you were to take like a corpse and just
like slab of gambling machine in the middle. You know,
It's just it's not an artful um convergence of the
female form and the gambling machine. It's very rough and

(43:34):
heavy handed and uh and yet seems to call out
to you and say, hey, play this gambling machine, woman,
let us transparently manipulate your brain. Yeah. You know. Also,
I was I noticed in one of the sites we're
looking at that had a lot of like retro slot
machine collectibles. Uh, the guy there was sent a selling
a bandit head from a one arm bandit. What a

(43:57):
bandit head? Yeah, you can buy it for a hundred
and fifty bucks on e Bay, but it's explicitly claiming
to rob you. Yeah, it's the one armed bandit. So
let's just go ahead and put this, you know, this
head on top, like a paper mache head with a
cowboy hat, and then you can go duel with it. Yeah.
But the thing is that, the thing about anthropomorphization and
anthropomorphism in general is that it permeates everything we do, right. Yeah,

(44:18):
and it's uh, and it's paradoxical at times, like it's
the it's at once. It's the force that makes it
easier to kick a garbage can because you think it's
a person, you know, like you make that garbage can,
you personify it as a somebody you're mad at, and
you kick it. But also if you draw a face
on a garbage can, it makes it a little harder
to kick the garbage can because it's you've you've given

(44:39):
it some sort of like innocent personhood. Oh, I mean,
I bet you treat your computer like a person. Sometimes
you don't really think it has a mind and emotions,
but sometimes it feels that way when it's slow, when
it's lagging, when it's causing you problems. This person is
messing up your day. They are so annoying. Yeah, I mean.
And it's also, of course a huge part, if not

(45:00):
the key, part of our religious thinking. In our religious worldviews,
where we attribute consciousness to the universe, we anthropomorphize the universe. Yeah,
either in the form of a single deity or in
an array of deities representing various personified aspects of reality. Well,
I think that's something that complicates this view of looking
at slot machines as as agents or as people. Again,

(45:24):
nobody really thinks the slot machine is a person, but
they can start thinking in those ways. And then there's
also a complicated interplay between the ghost of the person
you imagine is in the slot machine and this sort
of larger universal ghost, you know, lady Luck, the mind
of the universe that's handing out wins and losses. And

(45:44):
to what extent is that the machine itself or is
that this third external force that's watching over the both
of you. Yeah. Indeed, so the researchers in this two thousand,
fifteen study. This is what they did. They have first
they did they did four experiments in total, but the
first three were with a small study, so like a
very small sample size, really a quality quasi study. Participants

(46:06):
were a group of fifteen regular slot machine players in
a group of fifteen non regular slot machine players. And
then what they did is they primed the individuals before
they interacted with these machines. So all the anthropomorphization is
taking place here, it's not. It doesn't involve any physical anthropomorphization.
There no heads, they are no mannequins. It's all about

(46:28):
priming them with with a description. Yeah they're they're just
given text. But the text actually proved pretty interesting and
how it affected the way they thought about the game
and the relationship with the machine. I think we should
actually read out the text because I think the differences
are interesting. Okay, this is the anthropomorphizing priming text from
Steady One. Remember that when you play with a slot machine,

(46:49):
you don't need to implement any particular strategy. Indeed, the
slot machine can decide whether you will win or lose
a series of bets anytime she wants. Sometimes she may
choose to make fun of you leaving you empty handed
for several bets. Other times she might want to reward
you with a win. In any case, the slot machine
will always choose what will happen. You just have to

(47:11):
start playing and see what happens. So some people got
that one other people got remember that when you play
a slot machine, you don't need to implement any particular strategy. Instead,
the slot machine is controlled by a mathematical algorithm that
is programmed to deliver a certain overall number of wins
and losses. Based on this algorithm, you can win or
lose a series of bets in any case. The outcome

(47:32):
of each turn of the reels is always run by
a computer algorithm. You just have to start playing and
see what happens. So both are saying essentially the same thing, like,
there's a there's a force here, there's already in play,
and you cannot win against it. But in one case
it's she, and then the other case it's it. Yet
they found that that an anthropomorphized description of the slot
machine increased gambling behavior and reduced winnings. And winnings, of

(47:56):
course decreased because the gamblers were gambling more on the
to promorphized machines. Another moral about gambling, The longer you play,
the more you'll lose. Yeah, And that that's all it takes.
Just get the individual playing more and they will lose more,
playing to extinction. Yeah. So the first study they did
was more about just the time you invested in it.
It wasn't the Yeah. The second study, that one involved

(48:18):
real money or points, and study three tested the emotional
experience of the game okay um. Study three provided initial
evidence of a link between anthropomorphism of slot machines with
the participants emotional experience and their actual gambling behavior, but
specifically found that slot machine anthropomorphism increases the experience of
positive emotions, which leads people to gamble more. Now the

(48:42):
fourth study, this is where they took what they learned
from the first three and they applied it to a
much larger grede, this time two individuals, and they use
candies instead of money or points or anything. So this
is a key. Though unlike Study three, study four did
not provide support for their high offices that priming participants
with an anthropomorphic slot machine intrinsically results in a stronger

(49:06):
emotional reaction except for low arousal negative emotions. Such as
fatigue so tired, Yeah, so, And the researchers aren't exactly
sure why this is why they weren't able to repeat
the same effect and steady four that they kind of
study about the emotions right about the emotion. Uh, they
think that it might be because of different measures they
were using um between three and four, So more studies

(49:29):
required there. But the anthropomorphization, the personification of the slot
machine definitely did affect playing, like the length of playtime
and the losses as a result of the length of playtime. Yes, yeah,
And that's one of the key take homes here. Uh,
you know, along with just some of the key points
that came out of the paper that people exposed to

(49:50):
a humanized slot machine lost more points compared to people
exposed to non humanized slot machines. That anthropomorphization resulted in
greater loss of slot machine payouts. The people primed with
the humanized slot machine lost more slot machine payoffs because
they went on playing longer. And the theory is that
it's all about emotional arousal, which increases focus and engagement,

(50:12):
forcing gamblers to gamble more. That was the interpretation that
they applied to their emotional results. Though there was, like
you said, there was some discrepancy in the emotional results. Yeah.
And then the final like take home from this study
is that the other side of the coin is that
just as you can potentially prime somebody with the anthropomorphizing

(50:33):
UH text and make them gamble more, that this might
be a way to to UH to treat gambling behavior.
Oh yeah, Yeah, So if you're trying to discourage people
from spending their life savings on the slot machine, it
perhaps could help or at least mitigate the effects, just
to constantly remind people that it's a machine working by
an algorithm. Yeah. Like, of course, the casinos don't want

(50:53):
to do that. They want you to play to extinction.
But I don't know. I think the idea is maybe
that a law could would require casinos too, I don't know,
emphasize the impersonality of slot machines. Yeah. Like imagine I
think of the legislation that takes place around cigarettes and tobacco,
right you often, you know, it's about like let's make

(51:13):
make it less sexy, make it less appealing, put a
big scary warning on it, I mean, realistic warning on
it about the the ill effects. What if that was
applied to a slot machine where you cannot anthropomorphize it.
It has to be less flashy, and there has to
be a big, big plate on the front of it
that tells you this is all about the algorithm and

(51:34):
you're not gonna win. Surgeon General's warning, there is no
fickle god or god us inside this machine. One of
the other interesting things about the study, though, was that
it only looked at verbal priming. Like we said, so
people were either given as a verbal description saying it's
just an algorithm, or a verbal description saying she wants
to reward you. Sometimes she takes your money the other times.

(51:57):
It would be interesting to see the results of dual
priming along these lines, like a machine that just looks
like a flat, blank machine, or a machine that's like
our like our Marilyn Monroe machine, it's very much dressed
up to look like a human and given given expressive
visual emotions. Yeah, where I was looking at some some
YouTube clips, which is various slots and a lot of them.

(52:19):
How like one I was looking at like it wasn't
just fruit and symbols rolling by, but also like a
barbarian woman with a panther, you know, like what, Yeah,
like she's uh like, like the top half of her
like ends up sinking up with the bottom half, so
it's essentially like a bikini woman is one of the
the icons on the slots. Another interesting finding I thought

(52:42):
was that they pointed out in their discussion section that
while they were able to get in all cases anthropomorphic
thinking elevated by priming people with this with this pro
anthropomorphization text, anthropomorphization was present in both groups. So even
the people who were given the text that says it's
just an algorithm, is just a machine, still showed some

(53:05):
anthropomorphic thinking. They still attributed some beliefs and feelings and
thoughts to the machine, less than the other route, but
there were still some there, and that suggests that there's
an inherent tendency to personalize the machine, even when you're
discouraged from doing so. Yeah, all the machines are doing
when they throw on ahead or or any colorful imagery

(53:28):
is they're just they're they're just encouraging the pre existing tendency,
you know. The idea about these different ways of viewing
the machine makes me think of something I've read about
in the philosopher Daniel Dennett's writings before, where he talks
about the idea of the the three major stances that
we take in reference to external objects, which are the

(53:49):
physical stance, the design stance, and the intentional stance. And
it's a way of understanding and predicting what, uh, what
third party objects are going to do. And so if
you say, see rocks rolling down a hill, you tend
to think of this and what he would call the
physical stance, it's just it's just acting by physics, and

(54:10):
you can pretty much predict that they're going to keep
rolling downhill. When you look at an uh, maybe an
organism or or an object or something, you can think
about it in terms of the design stance, So like
an alarm clock is designed to act a certain way,
or an organism is designed by evolution to to achieve

(54:31):
a certain purpose, and you can think about it in
those terms because they have goals in mind, and it
sort of simplifies the factors we need to take into
consideration when predicting behavior. And then the third stance is
the intentional stance. That's how we think about agents. So
it would be like a person or a thinking or
a thinking animal. It it has things it wants to do.

(54:53):
And I think the idea is that you can apply
all three stances to something like a slot machine, like
it is governed by underlying physics, and if you wanted
to get really detailed, you could look at the physics
of all the electronics inside and how they determine what
the machine does. You could look at it in the
design stance, whereas it was made by a person who

(55:13):
eat your money, to eat your money, and it does
that very well. Or you could look at it from
the intentional stance and you could say it is an
agent that wants to sometimes reward you with with with
happy happy money times, and other times it will punish
you for your hubers. What I love about this is
that both the physical and the intention model are wrong here,

(55:33):
like only the design view is the one that actually
gives you a realistic idea of what this machine is
going to do to you. Well, I think you could
say that the physical stance is not necessarily wrong, it's
just unnecessary, Like there's no reason you would need to
look at the physics of what every electron inside the
machine is doing to understand it. Yeah, but but I

(55:55):
think it that the physical doesn't give you a clear
mind of what it's going to do to Yeah, what
if it is designed like the design is, it doesn't
give you the t the teleology of the slot machine. Yeah,
so that's that's interesting. But yeah, so the idea here
is that we we can be primed to regard a
slot machine within the intentional stance, but ideally, if you

(56:17):
want to have people not spending so much money on
slot machines, you want to remind them to think about
it through the design stance. The design stance is is
such a mood killer for slot machines. You know, whenever
you're made to think about what the slot machine is
designed to do, it kills the magic. Yeah. Yeah, you

(56:37):
you see through the facade to the nefarious purpose. Yeah.
Another thing the anthropomorphization makes me think about is the
future of electronic gambling, especially when combined with future generations
of artificial intelligence. Yeah, what happens when the slot machine
is not just in engaging in passive anthem amorphization, but

(56:58):
also but I like act of personification to where it's
actually it's talking back to it's engaging with you. It's
it's essentially a chatter box trying to to get you
to gamble more through conversation. Yeah, I mean imagine the
perfect AI chatter bought, uh you know, slot machine off
or whatever it's it's it's the Lady Luck slot machine

(57:20):
and she chats oh so charming lee while she takes
your coins one at a time, or these days, I
don't know if it's often even coins. I think you
get like you know, in the casinos of today, you
might get like a card as a certain amount of
credits on it, and it's slowly deducts, just a little
bits at a time, a little bits at a time. Well,

(57:41):
there you have it. Slot machines, the design, the purpose,
a little bit of the history, and of course are
our scientific exploration of slot machine usage in gambling behavior
from psychological scamble. So hey, we would love to hear
from any and all of you on this. I know
their individuals out there to listen to the show who

(58:04):
have history with slot machines. Some of you may even have,
uh you know, have past problems with gambling addiction and
therefore have some some feedback you want to give us,
uh some personal accounts you want to share with us
and uh and if you want us to share it
without using your real name, just leave leave a note
to that effect and we will honor it. You can
find us at stuff to blow your mind dot com.

(58:25):
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(58:45):
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