Celebratory Sounds on Slot Machines Disguise Gamblers' Losses As Wins And Incite Them to Play More

Researcher from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that celebratory sounds on slotting machines disguise a gambler's losses as wins, which excites him further to play more.

Gambling can fast become an addiction and researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that celebratory sounds from slot machines may have something to do with it. In ancient times, a person's winnings were celebrated by ringing a bell. Now, a slot machine is programmed with approximately 400 sound effects to mark this celebration.

Ideally, when a person loses money, the slot machine remains silent but when the person wins, a celebratory sound plays. Even when a gambler wins lesser money than he bet, the same celebratory sound plays. Mike Dixon from the University of Waterloo calls this disguising the player's losses as wins. Dixon dug deeper into a player's psychology to see his reactions to the different slot machine sounds.

During slot machine games, a player's palms sweat, which increases skin conductance. Skin conductance is used to measure arousal. For the study, 96 gamblers were asked to participate in two sessions of slot machine games. During the first session, both wins and "losses disguised as wins" were greeted with celebratory songs and jingles from the machine. During the second session, the sound of the slot machines was turned off. All participants' skin conductance and heart beat rates were measured during both sessions.

Researchers found that skin conductance and heartbeat rates were higher in almost all participants during the first session. Participants also admitted that sessions where their winnings were accompanied by celebratory sounds were more arousing and tempted them to carry on playing more games. Researchers also observed that the sound led players to overestimate their winnings when in reality they didn't win just as much. Though this overestimation occurred in both sessions, it was higher in the noisy session (24 percent versus 15 percent).

Authors of the study stated that though sound may increase the enjoyment factor of a game, it could also be misleading as well as lead to addiction to gambling.