Gambling and Psychology

When you think of Gambling and Psychology your first thought is probably of addiction.  I would argue that there is more to Gambling than addiction if anything I would argue that Gambling is a learned behaviour and the "addiction" which is perceived by others in reality is actually a form of conditioning.

For these reasons I would not say that Gambling is an addiction, for anyone.  I would say that Gambling is a behaviour which is manifested by those who have simply started and continued with it long enough for the conditioning process to be completed.

To understand this reasoning and my theory we need to cover a few things.  So to begin we need to cover Operant Conditioning.  An Operant is a subject, usually a person or an animal which you want to condition to perform a certain behaviour. 

Operant Conditioning involves:

1. an environment 
2. a desired action 
3. a reward 
4. a reward schedule

The environment is the embodiment of all objects and other subjects the Operant can interact with.  In our scenario of the Gambler, the Gamble is the Operant, and the Environment is the Casino or the shop or the gambling website etc that the Gambler uses. 

The desired action is either winning or playing - depending on whose side you are taking, as a gambler you want to win, as "The House" you simply want the Gambler to keep playing, cause that means you making money.

The reward for the Gambler is money, or whichever prize is given for winning the particular game they are playing. 

The Reward Schedule will vary depending on a number of factors that you want to control, they are the response rate and the extinction rate. 

• The response rate is the amount of time it takes for the Operant to associate the desired action with the reward and begin to repeat the action in the hope of receiving the reward.  Form a Gambling perspective here this is effectively the amount of time it takes our Gambler to become hooked.
• The extinction rate is the amount of time it takes for the conditional behaviour to dissipate once the reward is not given.  In terms of gambling this would be the number of failed or lost games the Gambler will play before giving up and therefore no longer be hooked.

Obviously as a Gambling body you would desire the response rate to be very fast and the extinction rate to be very slow.  Resulting in Gamblers becoming hooked very quickly and playing for longer even through a very long 'losing streak'.

There are a few types of Reward Schedules, most play with the amount of times the Operant has to perform the behaviour to get the reward, some deal with the amount of time between behaviours and so on.  The relevant Reward Schedule for our Gambling scenario however is the Variable Ratio Reinforcement schedule.  This schedule establishes a ratio of x : y.  Where x is the number of times the behaviour is needed and y is the number of rewards, resulting in a ratio of plays to wins.  The variable aspect here is that the value of x can change and will not be the same all the time likewise y may change over time too.

Now for Gambling, y does indeed exist, as does this ratio of x : y.  At first you might think it doesn't because Gambling involves chance, but the reality is the exact opposite.  Gambling is built upon mathematical principles, there is not a single gambling game that you will play where the mathematics of the game have not been thought out before hand.  The common value of y here is simply the odds of winning.  The odds of the gambler winning will always be stacked in favour of the house.  Simple slot machines are programmed to ensure that they take more money than they pay out.  Therefore in this scenario the value of y is the number of times the machine will pay out and the value of x is the number of plays it has been programmed to pay out after.

With the Lottery and with scratch cards too y is the number of winning scratch cards that have been printed and have not yet been claimed or x and y collectively form your odds of winning the jackpot.  All of these values are variable and change over time.  With Variable Rate Reinforcement there are a number of key benefits for The House the primary benefits are that the response rate is reasonably low.  Your customers will at first simply be people whoa re curious or want something to dispose of their money through - first time gamblers are often people who have the mentality "I am prepared to lose this money it's just a bit of fun, what else would I spend it on?".  Therein lies the problem for the Gambler, that they openly embrace the act of Gambling for what it is - something they are going to lose money on.

The extinction rate is also very slow with this reward schedule because the rewards do not come at regular intervals there is always the chance that "I could win next time" - because the interval between winnings is not known explicitly the Gambler will be conditioned to continue playing.

So is Gambling Addictive?  Well that depends on your outlook and ultimately depends on whether or not you believe the Gambler thinks about what they are doing.  I have to stress here that Operant Conditioning does not involve thinking at all.  This type of conditioning is carried out on a subject that is not thinking about what they are doing.  A pigeon trained to play ping pong with Operant Conditioning does not think about what it is doing, it is simply performing a behaviour that it has associated a reward with.  The same goes for our Gambler.  If they are not thinking about what they are doing they are simply reacting in the manner that is expected of them and of any human - you could condition a rat to become a gambler.  If they do think about what they are doing however, and continue doing it then we cross the line into the area of addiction, because addiction is knowing your action and its rewards and its negative side affects and choosing to continue with it regardless.

Now for the benefit of backing up the above claims and for your amusement here is a video of two pigeons playing ping pong: