r/todayilearned • u/thebigchil73 • 21h ago
TIL that the ‘high’ from gambling isn’t connected to winning - the dopamine rush peaks at exactly 50:50 probability. Gamblers get a rush when the roulette wheel is spinning but their pleasure is largely unaffected whether they win or lose.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12649484/567
u/MisterProfGuy 21h ago
I suspect this is similar to the research that there's very little meaningful difference in the brain between fear and excitement until you label it.
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u/Nrksbullet 20h ago
Norm Macdonald had a great viewpoint on gambling addiction which mirrors this. He said the real high is right before you know if you win or lose; that what you get addicted to is the hope.
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u/MisterProfGuy 20h ago
It's the hope that kills you.
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u/plaguedbullets 19h ago
And then you climb out of Hell (possibly again) and kill all the Gods and it turns out hope was the key all along
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u/Taraxian 19h ago
Yeah that's just it, working at basically any job has a higher expected ROI than gambling and tons of jobs are easier and less stressful than gambling, and yet people actively seek out gambling as a psychological relief from their "boring" and "soul sucking" job even when the job is quite comfortable and lucrative
If it were about the feeling of money coming in then every paycheck would give you the same high but it doesn't, familiarity and certainty breed contempt
Same as the "seven year itch" and people cheating on their partner with someone less attractive that they don't actually like just to "feel something"
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u/kurburux 10h ago
Same as the "seven year itch" and people cheating on their partner with someone less attractive that they don't actually like just to "feel something"
Isn't this also because of insecurity and trying to prove themselves? "Hey, I still got it, I'm still attractive!".
And people could always lie to themselves about how objectively attractive someone else is. They likely get more attractive (in their eyes) simply because it's cheating and forbidden.
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u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME 21h ago
Same with anger and pleasure. Reading about politics (especially the stuff that riles you up) gets you the same sort of high as say playing a video game or watching a movie/series.
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u/VerilyShelly 20h ago
I used to enjoy following politics 10-15 years ago, but it edged into identifiable painful stimulus years ago and I no longer consume political news for "fun".
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u/Frootqloop 19h ago
I struggle with this because we need an engaged populace that knows what's going on so that they can vote their interest and understand how their leaders actions and decisions impact their lives. There has to be a good medium between doom scrolling and the "nothing ever happens" / "we can't do anything" approach.
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u/uwotbaemanfam 18h ago
It can be addicting to watch political media, but after a point it feels like a slog/chore. Sure, you are more up to date and informed, and you can spread information about all the B.S. that's going on, but it's mentally taxing to thoughtfully digest what's going on all around you.
I think the key is taking long breaks from engaging with that content, grounding yourself, and coming back. If it's our duty to be informed (and I agree it is), then it's also our duty to recuperate when we can find the time. There are other people out there who will remain engaged, or even become engaged, who can understand what's going on and spread that information in our place in the meantime.
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u/Frootqloop 17h ago
Well said. I think there aee times where the urgency is higher. Now I believe is one of those times. But still you gotta check out for a bit. The landscape maybe be changing fast but the bigger undercurrents aren't. If you were informed a month ago , learning the nitty gritty of each scandal or specific policy point that's happened since, isn't going to change your big picture understanding.
Tangential but related - actually putting your money where your mouth is and doing something like canvassing or volunteering for something you believe in makes checking out not feel so guilty.
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u/raptorlightning 20h ago
Both feel nearly exactly the same to me. I do not know the last time I felt good being excited about something. It's literally always the other definition of excited.
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u/MisterProfGuy 20h ago
Research indicates that you should remind yourself you're excited and make sure you breathe into your stomach, trying to make sure you aren't bracing with your core. I hope that helps!
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u/ICantCoexistWithFish 21h ago
This has implications for human sexual relations that are… problematic
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u/any_old_usernam 20h ago
Does it? I feel like the implications are mostly "that helps explain BDSM"
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u/ifhysm 21h ago
I remember seeing something that the biggest spike in brain activity during slots was pulling the lever — not winning or losing.
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u/Emotional_Perv 20h ago
Best part of my cocaine years wasn’t blasting an eighball of lines in a day, it was the ride over to the dealers house.
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u/Iamonab0at 20h ago
Man, as a former addict, this hits way too close to home. I’d also argue that last turn you take onto your home street when you are thinking about what that first one is going to be like… Whew, I’d love to see what my brain activity was like.
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u/LEDKleenex 19h ago
I hate to quote such a sell-out piece of shit, but "tell me the reality is better than the dream" perfectly encapsulates dopamine driving our anticipation rather than the actual goal/act/achievement/end.
Nothing in the world excites we animals more than the anticipation of something. That is the high and it sucks.
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u/clover44mag 21h ago
Anticipation
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u/jmartin21 20h ago
I’ve heard before that dopamine isn’t a pleasure neurotransmitter but instead was for anticipation, so this all tracks
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u/bordomsdeadly 20h ago
Antici……………………..
Pation
(But pretend Tim Curry said it)
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u/DAswoopingisbad 11h ago
All I get from gambling is anxiety.
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u/NakedAndAfraidFan 10h ago
I kind of hate gambling for this reason. We have anxiety at home for free.
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u/swiftrobber 10h ago
Me too. Let's just say that I am a pessimist and always expects to lose so I don't gamble.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 8h ago
My apporach to gambling is this: "I'm going to pay X amount of dollars to be excited." I have no expectations of winning or how long I will last. I just think of the money I bring as already lost.
If I am up after 30 mins I put my original purchase back in my pocket and only play with profit so that I don't even care what happens at that point. If I go up $500 but come back down to even then in my mind I just got free entertainment for however many hours. Plus free drinks so it's kinda hard to not come ahead in the grand scheme.
Once you go in trying to win and come out on top that's when you end up chasing bad beats and trying to turn your luck around. The fact remains that mathematically every second you spend in a casino the odds pile higher and higher against you and they know it. That's why they give winners free rooms and extra nights. Because it's all coming back.
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u/browster 20h ago
I'm so glad I'm not afflicted with this. Just lucky in that way.
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u/Fun_Jellyfish1982 20h ago
Just lucky
You should try gambling
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u/browster 20h ago
Reminds me of the job recruiter who would shuffle all the resumes of the applicants and throw away half of them.
He said he didn't want to hire anyone who was unlucky.
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u/ThatOneWIGuy 20h ago
I tried it, got board after an hour or so. Just doesn’t have the constant dopamine hit of other things for me.
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u/suvlub 16h ago
Yeah, whenever I have to interact with some gambling mechanic in a game, all I can feel is unpleasant anxiety followed by relief if I win. Can't imagine doing that with my real money, holy shit, my hair would go grey!
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u/gladfanatic 18h ago
You have to be a little stupid to enjoy gambling, because statistically you’re going to lose. Everyone knows this, so you have to convince yourself that the slim chance of winning somehow makes it worth it. I really think that only happens if you’re a bit stupid.
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u/Theseactuallydo 17h ago
But undeniably smart people become problem gamblers.
Not saying there isn’t something off with gamblers however. I can’t understand why they enjoy it at all myself.
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u/BookkeeperBrilliant9 17h ago
Read OP's post again.
Gamblers aren't playing to win, they're playing to play. The reward comes from gambling itself. Gamblers know it's a horrible vice, but they can't stop doing it because their brain craves it like a drug. Even when they lose, they got what they were seeking.
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u/SwashAndBuckle 8h ago
I wonder if that occurs over time, with addiction. I was in Vegas the first time not long ago for a work conference, but hit the casino floors while I was there and tried a little of everything. Most stuff I was either losing, or just kind of floating around break even. Didn’t really feel much.
Then one night a craps table got “hot”. I think at one point we went 40 rolls without a 7, so the money I had out on the numbers just kept paying over, and over, and over again. Money just kept piling up. As a statistics guy I was just kind of mind blown at the sheer improbability of it. And somewhere in there I got a pretty powerful high, felt like I was buzzing. And I remember thinking “oh, this is how it starts. This is what addicts cling to”.
So for a first timer, it was absolutely about winning. But I’ve heard addicts operate differently, where they are chasing the feeling of when the dice are in the air, so to speak. So either I’m not predisposed to gambling addiction because I respond to different things, or the brain kind of shifts over time in how it responds to gambling.
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u/Maurice_Foot 3h ago
Ah, sorta like standing right at the edge of a long drop, feeling the frisson of fear and excitement?
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u/psxndc 13h ago
Eh, you seem to have a narrow view of what's enjoyable about gambling. Have you ever played craps? It's a very social game, where if one person is doing well, everyone at the table is doing well. The enjoyment there is more than just about winning or losing, it's the communal experience. I've had people slap me on the back and tell me I made their whole weekend.
Contrast that to Black Jack where the guy next to you can "screw it up" for you by playing a way you don't like.
I'm just saying when I go to the craps table, winning is nice, but I'm mainly going to have some laughs and good times with compete strangers.
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u/The_Northern_Light 15h ago
No, just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean that the people who do it are stupid. That’s simply not how addiction works.
In fact, some addictive behaviors are more common among smart people.
https://www.prescotthouse.com/blog/intelligence-of-gambling-addicts
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u/pichael289 18h ago
I went with drugs and probably lost less money than alot of gamblers do. You don't just suddenly decide to pay your dealer all your money in your bank account in the hopes you get more than usual. Used to ferry 6 people in a minivan to my guy and collect gas and finders fees and that kept me going for years. There's no part of gambling addiction that works like middle manning.
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u/DICKRAPTOR 21h ago
A lot of slot gamblers report jackpots are disruptive and upsetting if someone wins near them or even they win themselves.
The colloquial term for the sort of dissociative fugue state slot gamblers get into when they keep spinning is "the machine zone."
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u/LarsAlereon 19h ago
I can totally see this. I don't know if I'm weird because I totally get these kind of dopamine rushes and crave them sometimes, but I don't need to play for real money to satisfy them. I can fire up a slot machine or scratch card simulator game on Steam and spend awhile zoning out clicking the lever or scratching the squares without spending any money (aside from the $5 or so when I originally bought the game).
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u/PCbuildScooby 18h ago
Have you played ScritchyScrachy? I think that’s how it’s spelled. Great incremental scratcher game
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u/DICKRAPTOR 18h ago
If you find it interesting, Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll is where the term originates to my knowledge.
I've always found this to be really fascinating because of its intersections with compulsive gaming disorder. I see a lot of parallels between the pursuit of slot machine design and things like Engagement Based Matchmaking in multiplayer video games.
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u/We_Are_The_Romans 13h ago
She was on the TrueAnon podcast earlier this year talking about her research, and it was a fascinating conversation
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u/No_Initial_7545 9h ago
As a sports gamblers it's always weird when the bet wins very early. Bet on "over" in any sports and it's a blow-out from the start, the over has already hit by half-time. You have no reason to even watch the end. The best high comes from a bet that wins right before the end.
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u/TheShenanegous 18h ago
Posts like this fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of dopamine in our nervous system. Dopamine is not strictly associated with pleasure, a more accurate description is to call it the "seeking" neurotransmitter. It's a thing our bodies historically would dump out when we were in the midst of a hunt for an animal, or something of that nature, where a burst of energy might influence our success.
Our brain essentially dumps dopamine because it thinks it will drive success that leads to a dump of serotonin, the "well-being" neurotransmitter.
This is why tweakers do such weird shit, their brains are dumping so much dopamine that they feel like whatever they're doing is super important and purposeful, even if it's just disassembling a microwave. They feel like it's leading them somewhere, they just never get there.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 15h ago
This is also a misunderstanding, serotonin is not just wellbeing, and your explanation on dopamine is oversimplified
Dopamine is involved in salience/motivation/goal directed behavior/focusing attention (which you described), but also in sensory gating, reinforcement, modulating motor signals, arousal, etc.
Serotonin is even more broad in its effect. It is involved in appetite, sexual function, social behavior, gastrointestinal motility, nausea/vomiting, pain, sleep, satisfaction, stress response, mood, body temperature, sensory processing, cognition, vasoconstriction, blood clotting, and even the… heart valves? for some reason?
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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 21h ago
Yep. You see it with gamblers like bossmanjack. When they're fiending, they're just clicking the bet button like a trained monkey
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u/aptninja 20h ago
Who?
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u/Ok-Temporary-8243 20h ago
Twitch streamer who gambles. Supposedly the crypto casinos pay him like 250k a month to gamble and he still ends up owing them money
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u/SandwichT 20h ago
This is not that surprising imo. If winning or losing affected the dopamine, people would quit if they won enough or lost enough, but they typically don't. Similar to how people that are addicted to social media are not addicted to the videos or content itself, but scrolling. The end result doesn't matter, the spinning of the wheel and the digital scrolling are the drugs.
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u/Whaty0urname 18h ago
I had a psych professor in college that told us the cheapest drug/bet you could do for a dopamine hit was a powerball ticket like a day or two before the drawing.
You ride that hit and fantasize about what your winnings would get you.
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u/JumpOk2313 20h ago
I definitely know people that are addicted to the content itself, and are constantly switching between platforms like YouTube, Reddit, TikTok
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u/Spirit50Lake 21h ago
Dad was a gambler...a lifetime of observing him taught me that he lived for the Risk, not the Win.
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u/thebananahotdog 20h ago
"As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to" -Norm Macdonald
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u/Particular_Agent171 21h ago
Dopamine is released with anticipation, not resolution.
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u/RobbinDeBank 20h ago
Dopamine is not associated with rewards, but it’s instead associated with predicted rewards. It’s the core mechanism that allows reinforcement learning in more complex animals.
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u/hamilkwarg 21h ago
This is true. Getting dealt your hand when you first sit down at the poker table is a rush.
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u/spankeem_nz 21h ago
I get that feeling around KFC....when you go to purchase it you're keen as, the moment you pay for it you remember how inconsistent and shitty it is and that you likely just wasted your money
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u/CaptainMagnets 21h ago
There are so many better fried chicken places than KFC.
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u/Smartnership 9h ago
This is some kind of stealth marketing because whenever Reddit mentions chicken or KFC, I always eat Chick-Fil-a for lunch.
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u/Christopher135MPS 17h ago
Pigeons have a similar effect. If you give them a button that when pushed, always gives a pellet, or a button that when pushed maybe gives lots of pellets or none, they pick the maybe-lots-maybe-none button more.
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u/Last-Trash-7960 20h ago
I go over this with my clients, im a dog trainer. once you build the association properly the act that generates the potential win starts to give the dopamine, not the treat itself, and this is where magic can happen.
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u/DerKleinerKiffer 13h ago
That cant be true for everyone. I get my high from winning. Like if im there for an hour and only lost money, my mood is gonna be a lot lower than if I had doubled or tripled my money in that same amount of time.
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u/Lawlcopt0r 13h ago
I think the title is specifically referring to gambling addiction. The kind of person that is drawn to the thrill and the uncertainty is more likely to keep gambling even without luck
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u/mbmiller94 13h ago
You learn those bursts of pleasure/dopamine are completely independent from "mood" if you've ever met someone really into Call of Duty lol. They can be pissed off yelling at the screen and still be getting those bursts of dopamine that keeps them playing.
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u/DerKleinerKiffer 10h ago
That could be. Ive an addictive personality so ive always been real careful around gambling. I always go with just 100€ and whatever happens happens. Sometimes the casino buys me dinner and drinks and send me home with a few hundred extra. Sometimes I leave with empty pockets and only a few drinks in me. Main thing is on my worst days im only down 100 and I still get like 1-2 hours of 'enjoyment' from it.
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u/mayhem6 20h ago
Yeah, that tracks. I used to play poker when we partied way back in the day in my twenties. I rarely had a lot of money and it was always nickel ante, but the rush was all about the risk, at least looking back on it all. I'm glad I never had enough money to go anywhere organized to gamble because I may have had a problem....
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u/breakevencloud 19h ago
Yep, completely agree. Nothing makes me the feel the way I do as when a roulette wheel is spinning and I’ve put some money down. Which is why I absolutely never ever go near one.
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u/Not_A_Frittata 21h ago
I see you shiver with antici. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pation.
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u/APathSoTwisted 20h ago
This was my all time favorite movie/soundtrack for years. Now I'm not even sure if this is time warp or something else 😞
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u/B0risTheManskinner 20h ago
What is the chemical when you win then though. I certainly feel good when I win
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u/SlapHappyDude 19h ago
This must be why gambling doesn't stick for me.
I'm only happy when I win. And I love quitting while I'm ahead.
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u/GoRangers5 20h ago
Based on my own gambling experiences, I respectfully disagree.
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u/RobbinDeBank 20h ago
Neuroscientists and psychologists have been EXPOSED by the gambler GoRangers5 on Reddit!!!
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u/TheSympatheticDevil 20h ago
Ok then, why is it that you as a gambler engage in playing a game for money where the rules are rigged against you?
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u/Crackadon 6h ago
As a former winning poker professional of 6 years, I’ve seen countless degenerates coping, and a very small handful of advantage players across casino games/sports betting.
This guy is coping lol. It is rare when Vegas messes up their sports betting odds. The only long term winners in sports betting are anomalies, and mostly took advantage of old systems that are no longer in place. You Ofc have your short term winners, rich people who bet only the superbowl or someone that hit big on an unlikely parlay, but to be a long term winner in sports betting is extremely difficult.
Sports betting isn’t terrible if you spend all your time hunting mismatched lines, but those days are pretty rare and you still have to prove those lines are indeed mismatched which 99.9% can’t.
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u/TrollMcGoal 21h ago
Can confirm, the most exciting part of roulette is watching the ball spin around the wheel. Obviously winning is super satisfying, but it's the build up that makes it fun
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u/burnrobe 20h ago
It's simple. Dopamine is released in pursuit of a reward as it's related to seeking out a goal and repeating rewarding behaviour. Whole serotonin is released upon winning and is related to safety and satisfaction. The risk of getting there is always more exciting but that doesn't mean that people get more satisfaction from gambling rather than winning.
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u/TheQuarrelsomeEmu 19h ago
Having gambled previously, can confirm that any high I felt came from actually winning.
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u/tribbans95 19h ago
Well yeah my heart beats very quick when I lose a bunch of money too, doesn’t mean that’s the part I’m addicted to 😂
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u/OutrageForSale 19h ago
Right, because they’re measuring dopamine… which is released when you’re anticipating the reward.
Serotonin would be the measure of how satisfied someone is at the result.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s my understanding.
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u/YounomsayinMawfk 7h ago
A recovering gambling addict told me his biggest high was always when he barely lost. He said it was from the possibility and excitement of figuring out how to win the money back.
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u/HumanShadow 21h ago
Same with abusive relationships. It's why people keep going back.
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u/DigNitty 20h ago
Yeah, the excitement of a healthy relationship is lower than an abusive one.
Functioning partners can seem boring and dispassionate in comparison to people who have been abused.
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u/WashedSylvi 20h ago
This uh, put a recent friend breakup in context for me. They complained I didn’t put enough into our relationship, that I was distant and cold. I thought about and made material moves to care for them every day I saw them (most days). More than almost everyone in my life other than my wife. Most of their prior relationships, friendly and romantic, had some shittiness in them.
I’ve been bewildered over it for the last two months because I’ve never had someone end a friendship for that reason.
But not having the intense highs and lows of a shitty relationship means the stability would be boring. They are a person who seeks out those extremes.
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u/aptninja 21h ago
Peaks at 50/50? I would think hitting or almost hitting at longer odds would be much higher
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u/Avoidtolls 20h ago
The shame from gambling and losing is so damaging to my fragile ego,
it makes me physically ill. The utter failure of losing money is soul crushing. Even after winning, I'm still a loser.
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u/killbot5000 19h ago
“As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story
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u/thegreatmango 18h ago
That's some weird shit, lol.
I think I understand people, and studies like this throw my understanding fully upside down.
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u/shiftylookingcow 18h ago
My best understanding of this from an evolutionary perspective is that it's advantageous to a human's survival to explore and seek new sources of valuable things (a new hunting spot, a new plant to pick berries from) to not become overly dependent on one source for things that are necessary for survival.
We know dopamine spikes for "unexpected good outcomes" like finding a new hunting spot, that's probably how most people think of dopamine and it's easy to see why that would be advantageous for survival; spiking dopamine encourages you to make that "unexpected good outcome" become expected.... Of course then you don't get the dopamine spike from it anymore so you have to find a new opportunity for an unexpected good outcome. So you also need to have the inclination to look for a new spot in the first place. So it seems dopamine release is also associated with putting yourself in situations where a good outcome is possible but not guaranteed, which reinforces the behavior of exploring in the first place and increases the likelihood of finding new and useful things.
Gambling sort of short circuits this second function of dopamine by manufacturing a situation where you're constantly in the "good outcome can happen, but can't be guaranteed or accurately predicted" situation. Since the odds are manufactured (usually) by the house and game design, you never actually get any meaningful information by the exploration process of placing a bet.... So youv stay in the loop of being rewarded for putting yourself in the situation where a "good outcome can happen, but cannot be guaranteed or accurately predicted" . You can't ever solve the game so you keep getting the reward.
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u/RefrigeratorNo1160 16h ago
The thrill of the chase? Kind of makes sense on those lines. Chasing things is in our nature
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u/quequotion 15h ago
I think we should separate the language of "dopamine rush" from "pleasure".
Yes, it's a reward, and it feels good (briefly), but it doesn't really make you happy.
Maybe it did at first, maybe it used to, but after a while you keep trying to get it while being completely miserable whether you get it or not.
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor 21h ago
How do I exploit this to hack my dopamine at a casino?
Just play roulette and always put it on black or red?
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u/KennyShowers 19h ago
There’s 0 and 00 green spots so even roulette R/B isn’t 50/50.
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u/randompersonx 19h ago
I’m just n=1… but I’ve made a lot of money over the years from gambling.
This has been in different forms… blackjack… business risks… options trades, etc.
I can say that for me there’s some amount of a rush from opening a bet… and probably less when I collect winnings … but there’s a lot of pain from the losses… and while I’m willing to “spin the wheel” again after a loss, after a few losing turns, I will stop.
When my wins are outranking my losses, I will continue for as long as the recent wins are outranking the recent losses.
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u/Zealousideal7801 10h ago
Same goes with other addictive behaviors like drug use, excessive sex use etc. It's been proven in just the same way that the high happens right before consumption, not from the use/after use. It's rather always the opposite : negative effects and shame kick in right after use, which are the main drivers of looking for another escape, rince and repeat. Hence why one of the greatest way to fight the behavioral side of addiction is the "delaying" part
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u/crunch816 20h ago
I play online poker with fake money and the river, win or lose, is always a disappointment compared to the initial hand and the flop.
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u/skeptimist 19h ago
I had read previously that people with a gambling addiction get a similar rush from “almost winning” as they do when they actually win, a psychology which is taken advantage of in games like slots.
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u/HamburgerOnAStick 19h ago
Probably related to why when people become too good at something, they eventually get bored and quit.
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u/Menchstick 19h ago
As a gacha player, I can confirm I actually feel immensely disappointed when I get lucky and win the gamble early after saving up pulls for 3 months.
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u/Kurokotsu 19h ago
In this way, Yumeko Jabami from Kakegurui is one of the most accurate depictions of a gambler there ever was.
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u/buffinita 21h ago
Even more surprising is the brain response to the “almost win” which is stronger than during an actual win
This is why companies push parlay bets; you can “almost win” innumerable times while never actually winning