Why do people gamble?
Five studies, from 1975 to 2019, describe the everyday experiences behind small-stakes play: cheap hope, a sense of skill, the near miss and the way wins are counted.
Answer to the question
Why do people gamble?
Research points to several overlapping experiences rather than one cause. A small chance of a large prize feels bigger than its odds, features such as choice raise confidence in chance outcomes, near misses can raise the wish to play, and earlier wins change how later risks are weighed. The studies describe everyday decision making, not outcomes for individuals.
Key takeaways
- Ellen Langer's 1975 paper reported six studies and found that adding skill-like features such as choice, competition and familiarity to chance tasks raised confidence above what the odds justify.
- Luke Clark and colleagues reported in 2009 that near misses on a simplified slot machine task were rated less pleasant than full misses yet raised the wish to play, and only when the participant had personal control.
- Jeffrey Pisklak and colleagues reviewed the near-miss literature in 2019 and ran three experiments, concluding there is no conclusive, replicable evidence that near misses sustain play.
- Richard Thaler and Eric Johnson reported in 1990 a house money effect, more risk taking after a prior gain, and a break-even effect, in experiments with real money.
- The studies describe everyday decision making. They give no advice and make no claims about any individual.
Most of the reasons people gamble sit in how a game feels while it is being played, and very little of it in the odds printed on the ticket. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow gives the wider account of how people weigh risk.
Hope that costs very little
A small stake buys a long stretch of possibility. A ticket in a draw with long odds carries a chance of a large outcome from the moment it is bought until the result is known, and for many people who gamble in small amounts that stretch of anticipation is part of what the stake pays for, much as a seat at a match pays for an uncertain result.
The decision research gives the interpretation some footing. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's 1979 paper on prospect theory described value as attached to gains and losses rather than to final wealth, with a value curve that rises quickly at first for gains and falls more steeply for losses. Kahneman's book adds the idea of decision weights: an unlikely outcome tends to carry more weight in the mind than its probability deserves, which is the possibility effect. A small chance of a large prize can therefore feel bigger than its arithmetic share, a point developed in Why a 1 Per Cent Chance Feels Bigger and What is the fourfold pattern of risk?.
When chance borrows the look of skill
Ellen Langer called it the illusion of control: an expectation of success that is higher than the odds justify. Her 1975 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reported six studies, built on a single prediction. If features that belong to skilled activities, such as competition, choice, familiarity and personal involvement, are added to a situation governed by chance, people will become more confident than they should be.
The settings were deliberately ordinary. Participants cut cards against an opponent who seemed either confident or nervous. Others were offered a lottery ticket, with or without a choice of which one they held, and with tickets that were either familiar or unfamiliar. Others played a novel game with or without practice, and either themselves or through a proxy. The paper reports that all six studies supported the prediction.
Anyone who chooses to gamble on a game of chance meets small acts that resemble skill: picking the numbers, choosing the card, throwing the dice with one's own hand. In Langer's studies, features like these went with higher confidence in chance tasks of the kind people gamble on, and the odds were unchanged throughout.
Four terms recur in this research, and the table gives each its plain meaning and its source.
| Idea | What it means in plain terms | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Possibility effect | A small chance of a large outcome carries more weight in the mind than its probability | Kahneman and Tversky's work on prospect theory |
| Illusion of control | Confidence in a chance outcome rises when skill-like features are present | Langer, 1975 |
| Near-miss effect | An outcome just short of a win raised the wish to play again in a 2009 study, and later experiments did not find it kept play going | Clark and colleagues, 2009; Pisklak and colleagues, 2019 |
| House money effect | A prior gain makes people more willing to take a risk | Thaler and Johnson, 1990 |
Near misses, house money and the way wins are counted
A near miss is an outcome that falls just short of a win, two matching symbols and a third one position away. In 2009 Luke Clark and colleagues tested its pull with a simplified slot machine task, using behavioural and brain measures in the same experiment. Near misses were rated as less pleasant than full misses, yet they increased the wish to keep playing.
A near miss is not a win, and the participants themselves found it less pleasant than a plain miss, which is what makes the added wish to play worth noting. That increase appeared only on trials where the participant had personal control over arranging the gamble. Near misses also recruited striatal and insular circuitry that responded to monetary wins as well. Choice runs through this result as it does through Langer's work: a feeling of personal involvement changed how a chance outcome was received.
Whether near misses actually keep people who gamble playing is a live question. Jeffrey Pisklak and colleagues combined a review of the research on the idea with three experiments. One tested pigeons and one tested human participants, using a procedure that records how long a behaviour persists once rewards stop, and a third examined the paradigm itself. The first two did not support the near-miss hypothesis, and the third found no conditionally reinforcing function for the reel stimulus.
The authors concluded that there is no conclusive, replicable evidence on the point and called for more work. The two papers measure different things: reported desire and brain activity in one, persistence in play in the other. How the idea travels into app design is covered in Why Loyalty Apps Use Random Rewards and Where Slot Machine Design Meets Apps.
People do not treat every unit of money alike, and money they have just won can behave differently from the money they brought with them. Richard Thaler and Eric Johnson ran experiments with real money to see how earlier results change later risky choices, including the choice to gamble again. They described a house money effect, in which a prior gain makes people more willing to take risks, and a break-even effect, in which options that offer a chance of recovering an earlier loss become especially attractive.
Read as a piece of framing, a win can be filed as a separate pot that does not feel like one's own money, and a loss can be carried as a gap to close. Both are ways of counting, and neither changes the odds on the next play. The experiments used real money and not points.
Common questions
Why do people gamble?
Research points to several overlapping experiences rather than one cause: a small chance of a large prize feels larger than its odds, features such as choice raise confidence in chance outcomes, near misses can raise the wish to play, and earlier results change how later risks are weighed.
What is the illusion of control?
An expectation of success higher than the odds justify, which Ellen Langer found grew when competition, choice, familiarity or personal involvement was added to a chance task.
Do near misses make people want to play more?
One 2009 experiment found they raised the wish to play when the participant had personal control, while a 2019 review with three experiments found no conclusive, replicable evidence. The question remains open.
Is this article about gambling problems?
No. It describes research on everyday decision making and makes no clinical, financial or legal claims. Addiction as a category is covered in What is behavioural addiction? and Is phone addiction real?
Sources
Kahneman, D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Seed book; vault hub Books/Thinking Fast and Slow.
Langer, E. J. (1975). “The illusion of control.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 311-328. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311
Clark, L., Lawrence, A. J., Astley-Jones, F., & Gray, N. (2009). “Gambling near-misses enhance motivation to gamble and recruit win-related brain circuitry.” Neuron, 61(3), 481-490. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2008.12.031 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.12.031
Pisklak, J. M., Yong, J. J. H., & Spetch, M. L. (2019). “The near-miss effect in slot machines: A review and experimental analysis over half a century later.” Journal of Gambling Studies, 36(2), 611-632. doi:10.1007/s10899-019-09891-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-019-09891-8
Thaler, R. H., & Johnson, E. J. (1990). “Gambling with the house money and trying to break even: The effects of prior outcomes on risky choice.” Management Science, 36(6), 643-660. doi:10.1287/mnsc.36.6.643 https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.36.6.643
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). “Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk.” Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. doi:10.2307/1914185 https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185