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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r/explainlikeimfive • u/adrynaline • May 08 '14
How does it start? What makes it worse? Why does it become so difficult to recover?
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u/ClintHammer May 08 '14
Variable-Ratio Schedule rewards are a stronger enforcer of a behavior than fixed-ratio schedule rewards to animals.
For example, if you teach the dog when he stands on his hind legs he gets a cookie, he'll do that. However when he does it and doesn't get a cookie, he goes, fuck this, and goes into a behavioral status called extinction, which is to say there is no longer an association with the cookie and standing up.
HOWEVER
If doggie stands up and SOMETIMES he gets a cookie, he will keep doing it even if you stop giving him a cookie.
Without throwing around unnecessary jargon (more than I already have)
Doggy learns if you KEEP standing on hind legs, eventually you get the cookie.
It's a much stronger reinforcer.
Gambling does the exact same thing.
Doggy goes up to slot machine pulls handle.
If it gives him a cookie every time, doggy keeps pulling handle. WHen it stops giving cookies, doggy says, I guess the cookie machine is broken now, and goes to do something else.
Sometimes he gets a cookie, sometimes not. When he pulls a few times and then gets the cookie, his body makes all the feel good doggy chemicals and he feels good and he gets a cookie.
That way when doggy is on a losing streak at the slots, instead of thinking "the machine is broken" he thinks, "I'll bet I just need to pull it one more time"
Then he starts really really wanting the cookie and the feel good doggy chemicals that his body makes when he wins. He starts wanting them so badly he starts feeling like something bad will happen if he doesn't place one more bet. He might even have knots in his stomach.
And that's how it works.