Cognitive accounts of gambling suggest that the experience of almost winning—so-called ‘
near-misses’—encourage continued play and accelerate the development of pathological gambling (PG) in vulnerable individuals.
(1)Near-misses were rated as less pleasant than full-misses. However, on trials that involved personal choice, near-misses produced higher ratings of 'continue to play' than full-misses. -- -- Near-miss outcomes are capable of eliciting phasic changes in physiological arousal consistent with a state of subjective excitement, despite their objective non-win status.
(2)Why would the mammalian brain be designed this way? One answer is that we didn’t evolve for Vegas. Rather, near misses help us stay motivated when engaged in activities that require actual skill, and not dumb luck. Let’s say we’re learning to play basketball. At first, our shots are going to be all over the place, a seemingly random distribution of bricks and airballs. And yet, as we slowly get better, those shots will get closer to the rim. A few might even go in, which is pretty thrilling. The purpose of near misses, then, is to keep us motivated while we slowly improve our form. If we only got excited by makes, we’d quickly give up, which is why the brain also needs a mechanism to register progress.
(3)Manufacturers of gambling games have apparently known the rewarding effects of near misses all along, and they design slot machines in such a way as to exploit the cognitive distortions of gamblers. Using a technique called clustering, they create a high number of failures that are close to wins, so that what the player sees is a misrepresentation of the probabilities and randomness that the game involves. The gambler who nearly hits the jackpot will therefore want to continue playing, because he thinks he has a good chance of winning.
(4)
