How Losses Disguised As Wins Play Mind Games On Slots Players
Casual and experienced gamblers alike often feel they’re doing better than they actually are
2 min
It’s common knowledge that in the long run, the slot machine wins. The reason to play is in hope of an aberration that leads to hitting a jackpot or going on a winning streak.
One of the ways slots keep customers playing, despite most of them understanding rationally that the odds favor the house, is by disguising losses as wins. If players don’t realize how frequently they’re losing, then they may keep playing even as their losses pile up.
Dr. Michael Dixon, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo with a specialty in gambling psychology, has studied slot machines and offered an example in which a casino consumer is playing a machine for $1 per spin:
“When you spin and you lose everything,” Dixon said, “the machine goes quiet. When you spin and you actually gain more than a dollar, you hear the ‘bing-bing-bing,’ all those celebratory animations. On losses disguised as wins, you may win on one of the 20 lines that you bet on, so you win five cents, say, on that line. But the machine still goes ‘bing-bing-bing,’ as though it’s celebrating the fact that the player has just lost 95 cents on the dollar.”
The slow ride to zero
Casino environments are designed to be engaging. They feature lights, sounds, and other cues to show people winning.
“But when you go into a casino,” Dixon said, “and it sounds like all the machines are winning all of the time because the frequency of these losses disguised as wins, the full losses are still the most frequent, but the frequency of the losses disguised as wins are more frequent than the actual wins. So it kind of distorts the perception of how you’re doing on the slot machine.”
It’s easy to imagine a new slots player thinking all the machines in one section are “hot.” It’s no surprise that losses disguised as wins fool new players. But experienced players aren’t immune to the psychological trick, either.
“We did a study with these experienced players and we had them spin like 200 times and asked them, ‘OK, how many times did you win more than you wagered?’ So, a true win,” Dixon said. “They tend to overestimate the number of times depending on the number of those losses disguised as wins.”
Slot machines’ variable rewards accomplish two things. They make the steady march to zero feel less like a failure along the way for the player. And they make it hard to keep track of what a high percentage of spins are unsuccessful.
Variable rewards vs. consistent rewards
Psychological experiments in the 1950s supported a school of thought called “behaviorism.” Behaviorism posited that human behavior came from learning and environmental interaction rather than thoughts or feelings. Experiments that studied conditioning and reinforcing behavior found that variable rewards kept behaviors from fading better than consistent rewards did.
“What they found was if you gave an animal a reward every time and then just stopped giving rewards, they would ‘extinguish’ really quickly,” Dixon said. “[Whereas] if you make the rewards variable, then when you stop giving the reward, they will continue to play.”
Variable rewards are the foundation of everything from slot machines to social media feeds. The uncertainty of when a reward will hit makes the anticipation and the eventual win more intense. The variable rewards themselves make slot machines more fun to play and help disguise losses.
The psychological forces that make slots so engaging also make trying to emulate “professional” slots players dangerous.
“A very small number of extraordinarily disciplined and experienced players are able to consistently find an advantage over other players or the casino,” National Council on Problem Gambling Executive Director Keith Whyte wrote in an email to Casino Reports. “However, trying to emulate these professional gamblers is a bad idea for almost every player. I’ve met many people in recovery from severe gambling problems who said at one time they considered themselves to be ‘professionals,’ as they were in denial about losing control of their gambling and the mounting financial and emotional consequences. The more time and money spent gambling, the more likely there will be a net loss over time.”
Slot machines are designed to hook players and disguise how much money players lose. Regardless of a player’s experience, almost anyone can be fooled into feeling like a winner even as their bankroll shrinks.
