When asked about problem gambling, casino industry spokespeople often say that they have no idea of whether people are gambling to problematic levels. Sure, they drop a lot of money here, the line goes, but how are we supposed to know how much they can afford?
Well, there’s a solution to every problem, and a way to squeeze every human behavior into a box. An Australian academic consortium has developed a checklist of 50 behaviors that will tip employees off to problem gamblers in their midst. From Adelaide Now:
A CHECK list of indicators to alert hospitality staff to problem gamblers has been developed in a new study.
The list that includes a check list of 50-points, would be installed in every gaming machine venue, under recommendations presented in the study by Adelaide University in conjunction with the University of Canberra and the Australian National University.
The list asks staff to indicate how often a gambler displays a behaviour in order to establish how serious their habit is.
The checklist includes actions such as displaying violence towards the machine, gambling every day, trying obsessively to win, rushing from one machine to another and playing mainly high denomination machines.
The report also found that problem gamblers were more likely to show visible indicators such as anger, depression and violence towards the machines as well as sweating, complaining to staff and disguising ones presence at the venue.
I think that if you 86ed people for doing all those things, the casinos would be emptied within a matter of minutes. I’m talking tumbleweeds blowing through the craps pit. I want to know how you can quantify “trying obsessively to win,” as opposed to just playing slots for a long stretch. Is the correct behavior supposed to be trying obsessively to lose? And playing high denoms might just mean that someone has the money to spare and wants to take advantage of the better hold percentage; playing high denoms is actually rational behavior if you see gambling as an entertainment and want to minimize its proportional cost.
Violence towards the machine was so important that it gets two mentions. How about violence towards the staff?
Finally, it’s always great that “researchers” take something as complex as human cognition and behavior and try to reduce it to a bunch of boxes to be checked. Good luck with that.