The Casino Experience: A Family Affair
This past weekend, I went to the casino with my mom, sister, and grandma—a trip we had planned for a while. It was my grandma's first visit since 1982. As I sat there watching three generations engage with this neon-drenched playground, I couldn't help but reflect on how all our brains—mine included—were being expertly manipulated.
The flashing lights, the constant din of slot machines, and the palpable excitement in the air created an atmosphere designed to keep us playing. Yet, what struck me most was how similar our reactions were across generations. From my tech-savvy sister to my grandma, who hadn't set foot in a casino for four decades, we all fell into the same risk and reward-seeking behavior patterns.
This experience highlighted how casinos, like social media platforms, have mastered the art of exploiting our evolutionary instincts. These billion-dollar industries have tapped into something fundamental about human nature—a craving for risk and reward that once helped our ancestors survive but now, in the least risky time in human history, keeps us glued to screens and slot machines.
I hope you come away from this article with a deeper understanding of the human brain, how easily it can be manipulated, and perhaps, with this knowledge, how you can better navigate these modern-day attention traps. I still find myself susceptible despite studying these subjects for over a decade. It's a constant battle, but one worth fighting.
Our Ancestors: Risk, Reward, and Survival
At one point in our lineage, the gambler and risk-taker would have been beloved by many—at least the ones who survived. We know the gambler in you survived because you are here, aren't you?
Step into history for a moment. Imagine yourself as our ancient ancestor: cold, hungry, but patient. You, the gambler, sit silently with your spear, waiting and watching. Most days, the risk isn't worth it; you endure 12 grueling hours in the bitter cold, depleting your precious fat reserves, only to return home empty-handed.
It's been weeks since anyone in your village brought home a substantial kill. You vividly recall the last successful hunt: the celebration, the feast, the palpable excitement. Most of all, you remember the hunter, basking in admiration and attention from the entire village, particularly from potential mates. This memory replays in your mind as you sit in silence, suffering. Your hands and feet are numb with cold, edging towards frostbite. "If only I could bring something home. If only I could be the hero!
Then, one morning, when your reserves are nearly spent, and hope is fading, fortune smiles upon you. Just five feet away, a boar appears, its snout to the ground, completely unaware of your presence.
This moment—this is what you've been waiting for. Your heart races and adrenaline floods your system. Everything you've endured and failed attempts have led to this. In modern terms, this is your jackpot, your viral post, your moment of glory.
Inside of you, a hormonal explosion ignites before the kill. Your adrenal glands flood your body with adrenaline—cortisol and testosterone spike. Moments ago, you were weak, tired, and cold; now you're alert and focused, and your heart is racing. You take a deep breath, then lunge mightily, driving your spear deep into the boar's side. Red gold pours out as squeals erupt from the pierced animal. You wrestle it into submission, breathing rapidly—partly from exertion but mainly from the rush coursing through you.
As the animal lies dead, a new wave of hormones floods your system. These are reward hormones, preemptively mimicking the satisfaction you'll feel when you sink your teeth into the boar's nutrient-rich liver. They also prepare you for the social triumph to come. Dopamine and testosterone course through your veins. Yet even this rush may pale in comparison to the moment you walk into your village, the massive boar draped over your shoulders, met by the ecstatic cries of your hungry tribe. Tonight, you feast—and you're the hero.
The Winner Effect: From Spears to Slots
Once, such risk-taking was necessary for survival—waiting hours to spear a boar could mean the difference between life and death. That gambler still lives in our DNA. But today, we hunt not for survival but for dopamine: the fleeting rush of pulling a slot lever or posting for likes. This biological legacy of risk-seeking became a genetic advantage. The hunter willing to gamble on finding food passed down their traits. Fast forward thousands of years, and casinos and social media have expertly hacked this same wiring.
We're still heavily influenced by what scientists call the Winner Effect (Fuxjager et al., 2010).1 This phenomenon, observed following a successful competition in the modern world, applies to occupational gains, sports, social media, and gambling. We are, after all, simple creatures at our core. As someone who spent much of my childhood fishing, I know the Winner's High all too well. It's ubiquitous today and far more accessible than waiting six hours to tangle with a 6lb catfish in the mighty, muddy Ohio River.
Today, in comfort with the fact that many of our needs are being met, we chase a similar high. This morning, many of you scrolled through social media. You flipped past video after video, post after post, and you finally found it: a video that makes you cackle out loud while you lay in your comfy, warm bed. You take a moment and send it to all of your friends, practically saying, "Hey, look at my kill." Please validate my humor and share some of these feel-good hormones with me. You shared it on your profile, and you hope your broader audience enjoys a taste of it. You practically microdosed the feelings you would receive hunting and fishing and never left your bed. The same can be seen from sports betting as it is often very social; you put up a risk, get an enormous reward, and show your friends.
Variable Ratio Reinforcement: The Key to Gambling's Allure
If you take any psychology class, you usually cover rewards. I believe this is the most essential knowledge one could have for personal understanding and driving and coaching others. Many people ask me how I trained my dog so well, and the secret lies in understanding reward structures, particularly variable ratio reinforcement.
Variable ratio reinforcement, a concept pioneered by B.F. Skinner.2 In his work on operant conditioning, Skinner is at the heart of why gambling - and many modern digital experiences - are so compelling. This reward schedule, where the subject receives rewards after an unpredictable number of actions, leads to highly persistent behaviors. It's why you keep pulling that slot machine lever or scrolling through your social media feed.
In gambling, this principle is most evident in slot machines. Players never know when the next payout will occur, which keeps them engaged for long periods. Studies show this form of reinforcement is among the most effective in maintaining behavior because of the "just one more try" effect. Neuroscience research by Schultz et al. (1997)3 has shown that dopamine, a neurotransmitter closely tied to pleasure and motivation, is released not just when we receive a reward but more powerfully during the anticipation of a reward. In gambling, this anticipation occurs during every spin or roll, reinforcing the behavior.
But it's not just gambling. Social media platforms have expertly adapted these principles. The unpredictable arrival of likes, comments, and notifications mirrors the reward schedule found in gambling. As explained in Adam Alter's book "Irresistible" (2017)4, these platforms tap into the exact psychological mechanisms of gambling, exploiting our reward systems to keep us coming back.
Even the 'near-miss' effect, studied by Clark et al. (2009)5, plays a role. In slot machines, when you see two matching symbols and the third is just one position away, it activates your brain's reward system similarly to an actual win. On social media, this might be analogous to seeing a post go viral and thinking, "My next post could be the one!"
Understanding these mechanisms doesn't make us immune to them, but it gives us a fighting chance. Whether you're trying to resist the allure of a casino, manage your social media use, or even train a dog, knowledge of reward psychology is a powerful tool. It reminds us that our brains, while sophisticated, can be predictably irrational regarding the prospect of rewards.
The Casino Experience: A Case Study in Reward Manipulation
As soon as you walk in, you are overwhelmed by sounds and colors. It is hard to look down, and the floors are disorienting. The floors are also very hard, with almost no padding, as they don't want you walking around. Every step has sights and sounds, cheers of people winning left and right, and players' envy takes hold of you.
You finally sit at a machine that provides some familiarity for you. For me, it is typically something with fish or fishing involved. You sit, and the chair is insanely comfortable, your posture is perfect, your feet now without so much weight on them, feel relieved, and in front of you is one of the most colorful interfaces ever invented. It is eerily similar to the device you are likely reading this on; I mean, go to your apps page; no wonder you get stuck in a social media scroll loop. You don't put any money in yet, and a demo plays; it is loud, grabs your attention, has lots of movement, and flashes a potential reward. Just like you might be distracted by a notification that rings out and flashes on your phone screen while reading this, once again, it is the exact mechanism. You are pulled in, you put in $20.
You click the button and see 60 cents subtracted from your 20 on the screen; movement rings across it, and there is some noise and nothing. You press again because the hunter in you seeks a win. You press repeatedly, and it is almost impossible to look away. You are now negative $6. Next to you, cheers scream out. "I just won two thousand dollars!" There is a familiar feeling, to the hunter we mentioned before, to the feeling you have felt seeing someone you know post go viral. You don't want to feel it, but that familiar feeling is envy. At one point, it would have driven you for just one more hunt, but today, it drives you to one more click at a slot machine. You click again, and the reel spins... the first reel, 7, the next reel 7, one more, and you have a jackpot; your adrenal gland pumps as the last reel spins. Cherries. No jackpot for you, but you did win a small amount, and you are back to even. From a few chairs away, you hear more winning, and you press on because slot machines are a random interval reward. Just like a hunter didn't know when food would appear, you don't know when you'll hit the jackpot. That uncertainty keeps you hooked, just like scrolling endlessly through social media for a funny post.
Slot Machine Mathematics: Why the House Always Wins
The companies making products understand this very well. Loot boxes in video games, scrolling social media, and most prevalent and evident like gambling. It is so powerful that I can understand and know the statistics on nearly every type of gambling game, yet I still find myself playing. It is rigged against you; there is always a chance you could win forever, just like there is a chance you could open your dryer and all of your clothes be perfectly folded from the tumbling; it just isn't probabilistic. Since we have touched on slots, which have some of the worst odds, I'll provide the math. If the payout on a single pull is 90%, which would be generous for a slot machine, that means for every pull-on average, you will lose 10%. For example, suppose you start with $100 and bet a dollar at a time. After inserting all $100 into the slot, 100 pulls later, you'll end up, on average, with $90. If you run the $90 back through the machine, you'll end up with 90 percent back, which is 0.90 x 90 = $81. If you run that amount through in 81 pulls, you'll have $72.90 afterward (0.90 x 81 = 72.90). If you keep going for 44 rounds, the money will be gone on average. The same is true with blackjack, with a payout % in the 98%-99.5% range when playing perfectly and even Texas Hold-em, where the house often rakes 10% per hand.
With the formula below, we can see how long, on average, it takes to lose $100 if you pull the lever every 2 seconds.
Where:
T is the total time in seconds.
a1 is the number of pulls in the first round (initial number of pulls, e.g., 100).
r is the common ratio (the percentage retained each round, e.g., 0.90).
n is the number of rounds.
t is the time per pull in seconds (e.g., 2 seconds).
This comes out to about 1980 seconds or approximately 33 minutes to lose $100 when pulling every 2 seconds on a $1 slot machine. That is nearly $200 per hour on average. Think of how many other things you could do for $200 an hour and receive more utility. Why not rent a sports car and race around the track at Indianapolis Speedway!?
However, it is more than just physical environments like casinos that have mastered this art. Social media platforms have taken these principles to the digital realm. As they say, time is money. The average person spends about 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media daily.6 That's over 17 hours a week! In that time, you could:
1. Learn a new language, opening doors to different cultures and opportunities.
2. Start and maintain a small garden, connecting with nature and growing your own food.
3. Take up photography, capturing beautiful moments, and developing an artistic eye.
4. Write the first draft of a short story or the outline of a novel.
5. Build meaningful relationships through face-to-face interactions with friends and family.
Remember, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are designed with the same addictive principles as slot machines. They provide intermittent rewards—likes, comments, and shares—that keep us scrolling for that next dopamine hit. But unlike a slot machine, the cost isn't immediately apparent. We're paying with our time, attention, and often, our mental well-being.
What will you do with your next 33 minutes?
The next time you find yourself mindlessly pulling that slot lever or endlessly scrolling through your feed, pause and ask yourself: Is this the best use of my time? Am I endlessly losing 10% of my life? What else could I be doing that would bring more value to my life or the lives of others? By being mindful of how we spend our time and attention, we can break free from these addictive cycles and invest in activities that truly enrich our lives.
As we've seen, from the ancient savannas to modern casinos and social media platforms, our brains have been wired for risk and reward. What once kept us alive now keeps us tethered to slot machines and scrolling feeds. The house always wins, whether it's a casino taking our money or a social media platform consuming our time and attention.
But understanding this doesn't make us powerless—quite the opposite. Knowledge is our best defense against these expertly crafted traps. By recognizing the psychological mechanisms at play, we can start making more conscious choices about spending our time and resources.
Remember that boar our ancient ancestors hunted? The real reward wasn't just the meat—it was the survival of the tribe, the strengthening of bonds, and the honed skills. Similarly, our most fulfilling rewards today don't come from a slot machine payout or a viral post but from genuine connections, personal growth, and contributing to our communities.
So the next time you feel the pull of the lever or the urge to check your likes, pause. Ask yourself: What am I really hunting for? Is this the best way to get it? Could I be investing this time and energy into something more meaningful?
We can't change our evolutionary wiring but can choose how to channel it. Instead of chasing digital dopamine hits, why not pursue real-world challenges that tap into the same risk-reward circuitry? Learn a new skill, start a creative project, and volunteer in your community. These activities can provide the same thrill of anticipation and reward but with tangible, lasting benefits.
Ultimately, the most valuable jackpot isn't found in a casino or on a screen—it's in the life we build, the relationships we nurture, and the positive impact we make. By understanding our innate tendencies and consciously directing them, we can transform from passive players in someone else's game into the authors of our own rewarding narratives.
The next chapter is yours to write. What will you do with your next 33 minutes?
Fuxjager, M. J., Mast, G., Becker, E. A., & Marler, C. A. (2010). The "winner effect" in competition: Self-assessment, opponent assessment, and opponent choice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 4, 190. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2010.00190
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275(5306), 1593-1599. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.275.5306.1593
Alter, A. (2017). Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked. Penguin Press.
Clark, L., Lawrence, A. J., Astley-Jones, F., & Gray, N. (2009). Gambling near-misses enhance motivation to gamble and recruit win-related brain circuitry. Neuron, 61(3), 481-490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.12.031
We Are Social & Hootsuite. (2023). Digital 2023: Global overview report. DataReportal. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-global-overview-report