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 classic 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. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm jeral McCormick. Can.
Today we're going to be treating you to the classic
Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from a couple of
years ago. Well, I guess, yeah, yeah, this is an

(00:24):
encore presentation, but it's a really good one and I
think I think it's one that that may have some
folks may have missed out on an Now it's the
perfect time to listen to it for the first time
or re acquaint yourself with it because it concerns uh.
It's one of these these episodes where a number of
different things converge. We've got human behavior, we've got technology,
kind of the evolution of technology, and uh, and just

(00:46):
sort of the way that we exploit each other as well,
perfect psychological predation. Yes, so gets trapped in and learn
how to play to extinction in this episode about slot machines.
Step right up, Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, test
your skills and test your wits against the incredible one

(01:06):
arm Band at the Fruit Machine, the Puggy, 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 wins a set number

(01:27):
of glosses. It's just you against the godless predetermined mind
of the machine. So step right up and take your chances.
How about sir? Right there, why don't you step on
up and try your hand at the one arm bandit here?
Oh wow, yeah, I say this looks intriguing. It sure does, sir.
Just put your coin in there, pull the bar and
see what Lady Luck has in store for you. Really, really,

(01:48):
just one coin and I could be rich forever. That's
how it stocks. So you 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 pull, deliver pull it. Yep, there
you go. Oh well didn't work out for you this time.
Do you have some more coins? Well? I sure do.

(02:08):
I don't want to lose out on a chance to
get ritch. All right, Well, you might want to get
a bucket off them, so because this algorithm, it's a
it's a fickle gus. 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

(02:29):
little sketch we put together to uh to set the
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 in video games, not gambling video games, but like

(02:50):
legitimate like Grand Theft Auto or of course Super Mario
Brothers too. So you're not betting real cash money on
these slot machines. Absolutely just sort of virtual gambling, right, well,
especially like Supermined Brothers two 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

(03:12):
winning extra lives. So if that's the only slot 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
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 Supermaner Brothers too slot machine,

(03:33):
and that's going to be different than most slot machines
in history. That's right as 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

(03:55):
surgery machines, of all these 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

(04:16):
you wouldn't believe it. Yeah, 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,

(04:38):
and you keep putting money in until you can no
longer put money in because you don't have anymore, which
is a tactic you 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 it's
is its vessel. But as we're discussing earlier, there are
always more vessels for the slot machine. Yeah, you can

(05:00):
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, busses coming in with them,

(05:22):
of travel deals, you know, even like free room and board.
I was looking at a two thousand and twelve 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 UHI for every dollar they spend.

(05:46):
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
and free hotel rooms, free buffet trips and stuff like that,
they get back to fifty one on gambling losses. Yeah,

(06:06):
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 any coin operated machine, like

(06:28):
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 in the slot machine, which
is probably the most Grampa Simpson thing I've ever heard
outside of the cartoon, because it could Yeah, it could
be anything. You'd be gum, cigarettes, etcetera. You would say,
oh you you know, you wanna know the packet gun,
go over to that nickel and the slot machine and

(06:51):
do what comes naturally, right, 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 them as a
vending machine for thrills you put the coin in, because

(07:14):
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. Uh.
In the slot machines defense, it is, it does seem
to position itself as an entertainment device. Yeah. So in

(07:37):
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 race, and
that would give patrons something to bed on and eventually

(07:58):
shoot each other about. So like basically a little automaton
with raising 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 then the patrons might place bets against one another

(08:18):
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 I was reading
about this and it almost seems to harken to a
simpler time. It actually reminds me more of like trivia
nights he encounter at bars now, where with a proprietor
paid off winning customers with drinks or cigars or or

(08:38):
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 and drinks or something. You know. Yeah, it's to
get people in the door. Yeah, 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

(09:00):
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

(09:22):
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.

(09:42):
And there are also accounts that Faye essentially 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, 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.

(10:03):
I like how it seems like 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 and you know, manufacturers

(10:26):
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. Oh 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 Carnival
barker us get at the opening of the episode. Yeah,

(10:48):
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 kind of like the

(11:10):
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 when the reel stops spinning,

(11:33):
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 stops on all the reels are

(11:54):
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. And the way you'd calculate

(12:16):
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 eighth, with
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
dred and twelve, you get three Ripley's or something. If

(12:38):
you do, the machine pays out, usually by dumping the
coins inside, either all of them or some established subset
of them, into a place where you can collect them
and then promptly begin putting them back in the machine,
one at a time. I love this idea for a
slot machine because it also involves essentially a parasitic life
destroying organism, and I a wonderful uh anthemomorphizing sci fi analogy.

(13:04):
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 playing cards, spade, club, heart, diamond,
the classic iconography of gambling. They also had horseshoes, stars

(13:25):
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 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,

(13:46):
I read an interesting story about the origin of this.
Apparently because of the moral stigma of gambling in in
the early days of the early nineteen hundreds, there were
frequent attempts to ban or eliminate slot machines, and there
were lots of sneak he attempts 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

(14:09):
somewhat trying 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 corresponding to flavors of gum
could win as your pay out, though some of these

(14:29):
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 symbol that we all recognized today
on slot machines. If it's interesting, I was also reading

(14:50):
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 o six destroyed most
local slot machine manufacturers, and California banned the use of
slot machines altogether in nineteen eleven um and so to

(15:13):
stay in business, the manufacturers revamped the slot machines as
gum vending machines. So it's it's in. They're amost 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 days of electronics, and they'd have you know,
mechanical systems gears in place that would try to to

(15:35):
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 electronics eliminated some of the possibility that
people could kind of mess with the machines and machine
right to add an element of skill that isn't supposed

(15:56):
to be there. Uh, there are stories I don't know
how accurate they are. 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.
You can easily imagine that in the sort of almost

(16:17):
magical thinking that goes into the theological nature of the gambler. Yeah,
and of course now the machines tend to be fully electronic,
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
subtype of electronic gaming machines. And what role do they

(16:42):
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 is filled with them,
just a perfect the grid of slot machines. And they're
very human hosts. Yeah, it's almost like a like a
grocery storeile people just line up to Now have you

(17:06):
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
observed a lot of people playing the machines. And it's
very interesting watching the phenomenon of how people behave, like

(17:30):
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 they
use the machines for enjoyment and entertainment, But when you
watch people play them, very often you don't see much

(17:53):
excitement or or reaction. People very often appear sort of hypnotize,
their locked in the zone. They're not blinking much, their
faces are kind of expression less, and they're just working
the machine. Yeah, it makes me wonder, like what my
face looks like when I'm playing a video game. Yeah,
I thought about that too, But but but even then,

(18:16):
I know that I have at times found myself playing
a game where I asked myself, am I enjoying this?
Or has this just become a tedious thing that I
have to win at in order to call it a day?
You know, 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

(18:36):
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 about what you're talking
about here. Well, maybe this will prevent us from 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,

(18:59):
which again is tied. Yeah, i'mant emotionally, and of course,
of course materially, they're not that rewarding because, yeah, when
you look at the payback percentage, which again is determined
by an algorithm, Um, you see varying levels of payout.
Like some of those sources I was looking at, it
was between seventy and Yeah, one of the main studies

(19:19):
we're going to talk about in this episode site at
seventy to ninety percent. I've seen common percentages more like
eighty something percent. And in the US, I at least
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

(19:42):
to note that any payback percentage under implies that people
who play more at the slot machine lose more money. Yeah.
So if you sat down and just continued putting infinite
amounts of money into this machine and never left it,
you would always statistically come out behind, would play to
a extinction, exactly right. So what role do slot machines

(20:04):
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
entertaining diversion to keep people in your saloon drinking your beverages,
and then after that, after they were employing casinos, they
seem to have served as a kind of low stakes
alternative to the traditional casino games, you know, the table

(20:27):
games like blackjack, craps, and poker. Slot machines don't require
any skill. You don't have to study probabilities, you 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,

(20:49):
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 gateway. It's like I'm
walking in here on a newcome or 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 and you watch

(21:11):
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. But
of course, now slot machines are huge business. Yeah. I
was reading that it's estimated that slot machines generate over
seventy of the average casinos income, so more than all

(21:31):
the table games 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 near diversion becomes the
driving uh force in in casino economy. Yeah, and I
wonder what the explanation for that is, Like, is there

(21:52):
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
perfect place to gamble in a casino? Essentially, are are
slot machines of today more advanced than the black jack

(22:13):
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,
since I'm reading rereading 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

(22:36):
help but think of this in terms of the the
whole prohibition against thinking machines and the doing universe, the
Balarian Jahad, where you know, they wipe out um thinking machines,
and it's it's it seems as much my interpretation of
it, it it seems as much about like destroying a machine
like way of thinking and using machines to be human.

(22:56):
But but in that world, you can't have the 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. The blackjack
dealer is a ment at, yeah, he or she is,
And also a mentet is the card counter who walks

(23:19):
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
not allowed with the casino. But the slot machine is
the mechanical, the electronic perfection of thought, and that is

(23:41):
of course allowed by house rules to do its standing. Well,
you can't count cards 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
cit in a bit. People who think they have a
way to beat the machine are wrong. Some people might
think this way, but they're wrong. You can't beat the machine.
It is a mindless, completely unchangeable algorithm. No way of

(24:05):
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
on a machine, that the idea of the jackpot uh

(24:26):
wasn't invented 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
huge number that eventually somebody's gonna win. It's kind of

(24:47):
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 just plays into the
nefarious nature of the machine, right that you have this
this almost legendary mythological payout that's possible by manipulating this

(25:10):
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 never really loses,

(25:31):
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, because you're you're paying

(25:52):
a triple for it at least. 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 that we we

(26:15):
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 none of this

(26:35):
is that so your novice player, you walk in, you
check out one of these slot machines, and they're 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
arousal when you win, but it's also giving you a
sensitive emotional arousal arousal even when you're losing money. Because

(26:58):
for instance, let's say you put and 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 it and

(27:19):
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

(27:40):
put some more coins in. But another type of study
I wanted to talk about, and this cellectually referred to
some older studies that I think are sort of foundational
in the in 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

(28:01):
incredibly 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

(28:21):
the mint at threat that you think you're not. You
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,

(28:44):
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 that slot machines are a poor use of your
time and money. Yeah yeah. And so if your goal
is a gambler is to let's say, knowingly spend a

(29:06):
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 are

(29:26):
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 can't

(29:50):
necessarily 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 they're sitting

(30:13):
at the machine. Yeah. I mean 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 a you know,
a like a depressurization, uh to some to various experiences

(30:34):
in life where you you kind of let yourself become
seduced by say the lights and the environment of 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 feelings of shame or regret you
might have. Sure, And I mean, yeah, I think it's

(30:54):
worth thinking about. 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

(31:17):
of this 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 who regularly played one of three

(31:40):
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 gambling component. That makes sense because yeah,

(32:02):
we would keep thinking about like slot machines versus video games.
Would 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 players played each of the
three types of games for twenty or thirty minutes, starting

(32:25):
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 instructions were and a quote,
we want to know how you're playing the game. We

(32:47):
want you to talk all the time, so we know
what you are thinking about while you were playing the game.
When you were 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 UH
to these recordings, and they categorized all the statements that
people made into five different types. One was descriptive, so

(33:11):
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, so this is a statement
of strategy that is incorrect or is or it's an

(33:31):
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.
An example that would be like if I were to say,

(33:52):
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 that's I've got to win the next one. Yeah,
that that'd be a great example. And their 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 pay me and I'll pay you.

(34:14):
Those were all quoted in the studies. You pay me,
I'm going to reset the 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
playing slot machines, and the lowest were amusement gamers playing

(34:38):
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
and it begins about it begins to be just about

(34:58):
like beating the level, and even 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 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 I
need to jump on that thing, or you know, it's

(35:19):
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

(35:39):
slot machines were categorized as irrational. Though, I think one interesting,
uh qualification of this is what rational statements about strategy
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 not indicating

(36:01):
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, right, 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 Predictors

(36:23):
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

(36:45):
it's an unnatural activity, could be skewing results or subjective
attitudes and the participants. You 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

(37:07):
strategic 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

(37:29):
they made up. So one category they had was like
superstitious rituals, hypotheses or predictions, So this is would be
like I gotta dud my my my my rabbit's foot, right,
had I need to lick the machine before I play
at this? Right? These are all just false strategies of
thinking you can influence the outcomes of the machine or
or predictions based on things that that had no validity saying,

(37:54):
so like the gambler's fallacy, I think would be part
of this, saying like oh, if I've just lost a
bunch of times in a row, I'm due. And this
was fifty pc 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.
The way they explained this was they said these statements

(38:16):
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 you're attributing right exactly, So they're calling

(38:38):
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 yelling insults at the machine. These were

(39:01):
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 the playing of slot machines. Yeah,

(39:21):
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 correlated predictors of irrationality in this study. They're like, Okay,

(39:44):
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 so one thing they looked for
and did not find as a correlation between the percentage
of winds and irrationality. So doesn't matter how much you win,
that doesn't change how irrational you are. They did find
a correlation between risk taking in irrationality. The players who

(40:07):
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 gamblers often seem to
display irrational behaviors while they're in the act. So you're

(40:31):
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 you're answering questions about
the act of gambling, you will say things that indicate
you realize it's pure chance. You're likely to lose, you're

(40:54):
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, I mean, it's
almost like you're in sourcel 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,

(41:14):
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 does she
continue to control you? So? 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

(41:36):
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 gamble, or another element that
very much comes into gambling is looking at not necessarily
the mind, but the perceived mind of the machine. Yes,
this is really interesting, And there's a two thousand fifteen

(41:57):
study just came out from the University of Alno but
Coca from researchers Paolo Riva, Simona Sacchi, and Marco Brambella.
And there's actually a great quote in here that invokes
another mythological creature. They say it is possible that similar
to how in ancient mythology, challengers perceived the sphinx as

(42:18):
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 safety and low stakes and and kind of comfort
zone aspects of the slot machine with the thrill of

(42:40):
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 anthropomorphization and
uh slot machine gambling. No, like I said, in those
earlier papers, they found personifying the machine was very common. Yeah,
but this is the this is the first to really,

(43:00):
um look at how anthromorism 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

(43:22):
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 at Getty images uh
A nineteen fifty two. Uh, I believe image of a

(43:43):
blonde bombshell, 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 standing it's horrified. Yeah, she's just standing in
a I believe it was a Death Valley, California bar
or gas station or something. Now, is this a a

(44:04):
sexualized figure of a woman that just happens to have
a 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 a gambling machine in the middle. You know.
It's just it's not an artful um convergence of the

(44:26):
female form and the gambling machine. It's very rough and
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 it selling

(44:48):
a bandit head from a one arm bandit What a
bandit head? Yeah, you can buy it for a hundred
and fifty bucks on eBay, but it's explicitly claiming to
rob you. Yeah, it's the one armed bandit. So let's
just ahead and put this uh, 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

(45:10):
in general is that it permeates everything we do. Right. Yeah,
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

(45:32):
to kick the garbage can because it's you've you've given
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,

(45:53):
and it's also of course a huge part, if not
the key part of our religious thinking and 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

(46:15):
at slot machines as as agents or as people. Again,
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

(46:37):
of the universe that's handing out wins and losses. And
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

(46:57):
a very small sample size, really a quality quas I
study participants 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

(47:18):
physical anthropomorphization. There are no heads, there are no mannequins.
It's all about priming them with just with a description. Yeah,
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

(47:41):
text from Steady One. Remember that when you play with
a slot machine, 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

(48:03):
machine will always choose what will happen. You just have
to 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

(48:24):
can win or lose a series of bets in any case.
The outcome 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 an anthropomorphized description

(48:47):
of the slot machine increased gambling behavior and reduced winnings,
and winnings, of course decreased because the gamblers were gambling
more on the anthropomorphized machine. Another moral about gambling, the
longer you play, the more you'll lose, and that that's
all it takes. Just get the individual playing more and
they will lose more, playing to extinction. So the first
study they did was more about just the time you

(49:08):
invested in it. It wasn't. Yeah. The second study, that
one involved 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,

(49:29):
but specifically found that swat machine anthropomorphism increases the experience
of positive emotions, which leads people to gamble more. Now
the fourth study, this is where they took what they
learned from the first three and they applied it to
a much larger gree this time two individuals, and they
use candies instead of money or points or anything. So

(49:50):
this is a key. Though unlike study three, study four
did not provide support for their hypothesis that priming participants
with an anthropomorphic slot machine in t inmsically results in
a stronger emotional reaction except for low arousal negative emotions
such as fatigue so tired yeah so, And the researchers
aren't exactly sure why this why they weren't able to

(50:13):
repeat the same effect and steady four that 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 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

(50:34):
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 the people exposed to 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

(50:56):
humanized slot machine lost more slot machine payouts because they
went playing longer. And the theory is that it's all
about emotional arousal, which increases focus and engagement, 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

(51:18):
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 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 a slot machine, it perhaps could help

(51:41):
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 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
require casinos too, I don't know, emphasize the imp personality
of slot machines. Yeah, Like imagine I think of the

(52:03):
legislation that takes place around cigarettes and tobacco, right you often,
you know, it's about like, let's make 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

(52:26):
the front of it that tells you this is all
about the algorithm and 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 a verbal priming.
Like we said, so people were either given as a
verbal description saying it's just an algorithm, or a verbal

(52:47):
description saying she wants to reward you. Sometimes she takes
your money the other times. It would be interesting to
see the results of visual priming along these lines, like
a machine that just looks like a flat blank machinean
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

(53:10):
looking at some some YouTube clips, which is various slots
and a lot of them. How like when 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

(53:32):
one of the the icons on the slots. Okay, another
interesting finding I thought 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

(53:53):
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 anthropomorphic thinking. They still attributed some beliefs
and feelings and thoughts to the machine, less than the
other group, but there were still some there, And that
suggests that there's an inherent tendency to personalize the machine,

(54:14):
even when you're discouraged from doing so. Yeah, all the
machines are doing when they throw on ahead or or
any colorful imagery 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,

(54:36):
where he talks about the idea of the the three
major stances that we take in reference to external objects,
which are the 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,

(55:00):
tend to think of this and what he would call
the physical stance, it's just it's just acting by physics,
and 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,

(55:22):
or an organism is designed by evolution to to achieve
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

(55:44):
a thinking animal. It it has things it wants to do.
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 six
of all the electronics inside and how they determine what
the machine does. You could look at it in the

(56:05):
design stance, whereas it was made by a person who
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,

(56:29):
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

(56:50):
think it that the physical doesn't give you a clear
mind of what it's going to do to you, what
it is designed like the design is it doesn't give
you the tele the tele pology 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

(57:12):
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 it kills the magic. Yeah. Yeah,
you you see through the facade to the nefarious purpose. Yeah.

(57:37):
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
also but like active personification to where it's actually it's

(57:57):
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, a slot machine off or
whatever it's it's it's the Lady Luck slot machine and
she chats oh so charming lee while she takes your

(58:19):
coins one at a time. Or these days, I don't
know if it's often even coins, and 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.
All right. So there you have it. Great episode. I
think one that that holds up. All the material here

(58:41):
is pretty evergreen. But there has been a lot of
research around this topic. And in fact, we were just
looking around before we did the the the the the
rereleased material here on the episode, and we saw that
there's been some fascinating studies about rats rat slot machine tests. Yeah,
that's a thing. So if you were interested, if you're

(59:01):
if you were hungry for more uh slot machine content,
we may come back and do a little something on
rats and slot machine science. Let us know if that
sounds like a good idea or a great idea. I wonder, now,
if you've got a rat problem in your house, if
it would be more humane then go into the rat
trap and all the standard grizzly outcomes, if you could

(59:23):
just get the rats to play to extinction, Yeah, it
would be good. You know what I was having to
do for a while, what we had mice coming to
the house. I was using humane live traps, and at
first I was being super nice with him. I would
take them to a field. I would drive each mouse
out to a field and release it. Um. But it
got to be a bit too much work, especially if
it's like ten thirty at night. You know, who wants

(59:44):
to drive to a field or a mouse? So I
would just drive them down to the local marta station,
the local public transportation system and uh and let them
loose there. You're you're a hero, right, could give them
a fine chance, you know, uh, And I give them
a little fair so that they could, you know, pay
their way. That'll take an you were in the city,
slice of pizza. Yeah, there you go. Alright, So hey,
if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff

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(01:00:28):
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