If you want to help someone avoid a gambling addiction, then you should show them how slot machines work.
That’s the conclusion of new research from the University of Waterloo which was recently published in the journal International Gambling Studies.
The study focused on the concept of losses disguised as wins – slot machine operations where lights and music are used to signify a win, even though the player won less than they had put into the machine.
A team of psychology researchers looked at the difference in gambling behaviours between people who were first shown a video about losses disguised as wins and people who were instead given an unrelated video. All of the people selected for the study were described as “novice gamblers.”
The participants were then give slot machines to play, and were asked to estimate how many times they won more than they had bet.
Participants who watched the video about losses disguised as wins were more or less accurate in their estimates, while those who watched the unrelated video said that they had won about twice as often as they really had.
Waterloo’s gambling researchers have previously found that gamblers are more likely to stick with a machine for longer – which can be a symptom of addiction – when losses are disguised as wins.
