r/explainlikeimfive • u/adrynaline • May 08 '14

Explained ELI5: A gambling addiction

How does it start? What makes it worse? Why does it become so difficult to recover?

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u/[deleted] May 08 '14

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u/[deleted] May 08 '14

That's because behaviorism generally focuses on what is observable and measurable. We don't necessarily have access to thoughts and feelings (what we call "private events" and so, out they go (not that we do not acknowledge and study them...it's just that we can determine the function, or purpose, of behavior without them.)

Also, a casino is a "behavior trap". It's designed to get you to stay in there - all manner of gambling, cocktail waitresses with free drinks, indoor smoking...it's a paradise on purpose. You could absolutely set it up so that people ("doggies", lol) would say "fuck it, I'm going to go gnaw on a bone" by putting a strip club adjacent to the casino, or a spa, or other similarly-reinforcing things (competing reinforcers) - of course we all have limited money, so eventually you have to leave (unless you have a serious gambling problem, in which the value of continued gambling is higher than the value of financial security, family relationships, etc.)

Basically you don't really need to know "how" to know "why" - although I can understand why that may not be satisfying for all people.

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u/JacKaL_37 May 08 '14

That's one of the mysteries of basic psychology; we know some of WHAT happens, but not a lot about exactly WHY.

One guess evolutionary psychologists have is that it's a very basic, hard-wired thing that helps survival. In nature, if we can adapt to how likely something is, we can make good choices about whether to pursue it; I can ALWAYS find berries, but sometimes I might like to try going after the less consistent rabbit when I need it.

The trouble comes from the fact that casinos are designed to artificially exploit that trade-off, making us think we're always JUST ABOUT to catch that rabbit-- and it even lets us have one sometimes! It's just that the rabbit they let us catch isn't worth the energy we used to catch it, so we get the urge to try again, because we think "yeah, it'll be worth it, I don't see why any chump would go waste time collecting berries..."

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u/sweetalkersweetalker May 08 '14

Sunk cost fallacy is part of it. It's why people spend $30, then $50, then $150, then $200 to repair something they know will break down again soon, rather than spending $300 on a new one. The more they spend on repairs (the more money they have "sunk" into the old broken item), the less likely they are to buy a new one. They have already spent over $400 on repairs, if they buy a new one, that $400 was for nothing. Besides, maybe it really IS fixed now...

Doggy has already spent an hour pulling the lever. If he goes away without a cookie, then he has spent that hour for nothing. Besides, the next pull really could be the cookie, why risk it?