I found this interesting:
Las Vegas companies have done extensive studies on human interactions with gaming; hooking people up with electrodes and sampling blood to see what makes them tick. It turns out the “hook”, the little endorphin based jolt people get while playing, is not the high you get from a win: it’s from the exact moment that you commit the funds, when you make the bet – each time. It’s the risk that people get addicted to, not the result.
This is why people don’t seem to care too much if they loose money, allowing them to deny the obvious reality of bad odds. And the thing that makes people play over and over again – sometimes to the brink of destitution – knowingly loosing hundreds, thousands, or millions – again and again.
It’s a strange human phenomenon. Some chaos theory strange attractor. Like someone throwing pennies into a wishing pond:
Throw: ”I wish I had more money.”
Throw: ”I wish I had more money.”
Throw: ”I wish I had more money.”
I also remember something in college about this (Perhaps B.F. Skinner’s work) where another interesting phenomenon was captured. Something like this: if you give a mouse in a cage a little button, where if they hit it they get cocaine, they acquire X level of addiction, forgoing food and whatnot. However, if you randomly provide the cocaine in the exact same mechanism, what happens is that the enforcement actually becomes stronger X+Y.
Apparently brain activity decreases with known repeatability, but the randomness engages much more of your brain (presumably trying to figure out why the good thing is happening) and thus brings more receptors/endorphins into play, creating a stronger kick when you do get the reward.
This is obvious when you think about it, explaining much in life. Like why random, emotionally/mentally engaging sex is so much better than known predictable sex.