By card 10 (about forty-five seconds into the game), measures of skin conductance showed that their bodies were wise to the way the game was rigged. But even ten turns later—on card 20—“all indicated that they did not have a clue about what was going on,” the researchers noted. It took until card 50 was turned, and several minutes had elapsed, for all the participants to express a conscious hunch that decks A and B were riskier.

