Can people control their behavior? Or, as the Smashing Pumpkins might say, in spite of all our rage, we’re still just rats in a cage? This piece in the Columbian gives a shot at figuring it out, and even quotes your illustrious blogger:
Gambling is an example of variable or intermittent reinforcement. A gambler learns that an action, making a bet, can result in a desired outcome, winning. The variable aspect of winning — a gambler might win three bets in a row before losing the next 10 — makes it all the more difficult to get up and walk away.
But David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, isn’t ready to apply scientific research done by Skinner and others to all aspects of gambling.
“I’ve got some problems with that,” he said. “Because people really aren’t rats.”
I stand by that observation–if you’re going to try to construct a theory of why people gamble, it needs to be much more sophisticated than “variable reinforcement.” I’m sure the casino marketing people wish it were that easy, but it’s not.
In any event, my reinforcement schedule was way out of whack yesterday, since I finished 13th out of 14th in the Run-Good Challenge II. After a promising start (i.e., not going out first overall), I made a spectacular exit. By spectacular I mean “making decisions that are more about hunches than pot odds.”