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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 to Blow your Mind, If you want to explore more episodes from the back catalog, and there's a tremendous amountable of good stuff in there that you should check out, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes, tons of videos. You will find blog post as low as links out to our various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and a little light And if you want to get in touch with us directly to let us know about feedback you have on this episode or any other. You want to let us know the topic you think we should do in the future, or you just want to check in, say hi, see how we're doing, let us know how you're doing. You can email us and blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com a lot. Everybody believe in the Big Men ey T five five about first part far f