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Started reading
June 16, 2025
They’ve found that permanent change and lasting satisfaction lie in finding enough.
Psychologists call this stopping of unrewarding behavior “extinction.”
A finicky engine keeps our attention longer than a dead one.
The result of a spin could result in nothing. Or it could be life changing.”
“Casinos call what just happened a near miss,” Sahl explained. “And near misses are key. They appear in all games, but they’re critical in slot machines. They provide entertainment, excitement, and stimulation and compel people to play again quickly.
Teams of scientists in Israel and Canada discovered that frequent near misses—the same amount we see in modern slot machines—lead people to gamble about 33 percent longer.
The scientists wrote that near misses “invigorate play,” because our brains register these near misses similarly to wins.
As Sahl said, the near misses become fun and rewarding in and of themselve...
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Research shows the faster we can repeat a behavior, the more likely we are to repeat.
Those are the three conditions for a behavior to fall into a scarcity loop: opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability.
But slot machines won because they amplified the loop. More and faster and stronger. For example, the average blackjack player can play 60 to 105 hands an hour. But in that same time, a slot machine player averages anywhere from 600 to 1,000 games.
Gambling allows us to experience risks and thrills, and that’s fun.”
Research indeed shows that most people don’t gamble with enough money to really affect their finances. Rather, gambling is a hobby.
If a gambler loses money playing a slot machine but still had fun, they have, in a way, won. If they happen to leave the casino with more money, they’ve double-won.
Falling into the scarcity loop can be fun. The combination of opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability provides the structure for the ultimate game.
There is, in fact, an entire scientific idea called “optimal foraging theory” that says animals do whatever they can to get the most food for the least amount of effort.
Some will choose the gambling game even if the predictable game gives them more than 700 percent more food. “Seven hundred percent,” Zentall repeated.
If you are almost certain the reward will happen, it’s nice. But if you are unsure the reward will happen, then you’re very excited when it happens. So much so that you’ll make suboptimal decisions.
Like playing a slot machine, our searches kept us in suspense with unpredictable rewards. We knew we’d probably find food eventually. But when? And how much food?
Gambling is when the cards or slot reels or dice are falling.”
Once we know something is pleasurable or rewarding, dopamine is primarily released when we’re pursuing and anticipating receiving that pleasurable thing, not when we’re actually receiving the pleasurable thing.
“Dopamine peaks when we don’t know if we’ll get the reward.” Unpredictable rewards suck us into a vortex of suspense. Near misses and losses disguised as wins stoke the system to incentivize quick repetition.
