Interesting research. A point not mentioned in the article is that near misses represent a bias towards ‘analog perception’ over ‘discrete perception’. In many cases we process discrete information as if it is analog, as it is apparent from this research, even if we are fully aware that the relevant outcomes depend only on discrete values such as win no-win. | very casino game is a game of odds, but not always in the way you think. Work published this month in the journal Neuron shows that almost winning actually increases the odds - that we’ll keep playing. |
Gambling is a widespread cultural phenomena that has spanned thousands of years and almost every civilization that’s appeared on the face of the planet. And as long as gambling has been around the odds have always favored the house to win. Logically it has to be this way; otherwise casinos would have gone out of business millennia ago. But with the odds stacked against us and our rational brain aware of this, why do we bother to gamble at all? |
In the current study, researchers from Cambridge examined the brains of 15 people with a fMRI machine while they gambled on a slot machine. What they found was that brain activity for winning spins was greatly increased in the ventral striatum and anterior insula; part of a neuronal circuit that is well known as the reward system. |
In a nutshell the way our brain processes our feelings of reward and success at a job well done is: trigger > reward > reinforcement. In gambling the trigger is of course money, and this fires up the reward systems in your brain, which are largely governed by release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This feels great, you are rewarded and you want to do it again and the trigger is reinforced as something that’s good. |
This process isn’t limited to gambling or money of course; it’s also the same thing that happens when you eat delicious chocolate, or why I turn into a slobbering canine when I smell bacon. You might also have guessed that this is part of the mechanism behind addiction to heroin and other drugs of abuse, which we can define as uncontrolled reward and reinforcement. |
Close enough is good enough |
That gambling activates the reward system isn’t a surprise. But the astonishing observation from this study comes when we look at brain activity when the subjects “almost win”.
In this case “almost wining” was when the slot machine dials stopped tumbling and 2 out of the three symbols lined up on the payout line and the third matching symbol appeared just above the “win line”. When this happened, the pattern of activity was in the same brain areas as when they actually won. |
It seems that a near-miss is enough to trigger the reward > reinforcement cascade, and is effectively encouraging us to continue gambling. |
As if to drive the point home the brain pattern of near-miss activity was also very different from the patterns observed when the slot machine spin was still a losing spin but where none of the symbols were anywhere near close to matching - despite the economic result being the same: zero dollars won. |
While it wasn’t previously clear how it worked, the near-miss phenomena has been known for some time. What is perhaps more insidious though is that the optimum rate of near-misses to keep people gambling has been calculated at 30% and subsequently implemented into the programming of many slot machines.*** Read more at veryevolved.com |
| Power holders often seem misguided in their actions. Leaders and commanders of warring nations regularly underestimate the costs in time, money, and human lives required for bringing home a victory. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies routinely overestimate their capacity to turn mergers and acquisitions into huge profits, leading to financial losses for themselves, their companies, and their stockholders. Even ordinary people seem to take on an air of invincibility after being promoted to a more powerful position. The consequences of these tendencies, especially when present in the world’s most powerful leaders, can be devastating. |
| show that power can literally “go to one’s head,” causing individuals to think they have more personal control over outcomes than they, in fact, do.See more at www.brainmysteries.com |
Now you see sadness, now you don’t. |
A new study has found that removing just the tears out of pictures of people crying reduces the sadness that viewers perceive in the photos, even though the rest of the expression remains intact. The research subjects said when the tears were digitally erased,
the faces’ emotional content became ambiguous, ranging from awe-filled to puzzlement. |
“One of the startling things is that the faces not only look less sad but they don’t look sad at all. They look neutral,” said Robert Provine, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County neuroscientist who led the work. “Any photograph you see, you can put your finger on the screen and block out the tears. It’s like the face is transformed.” |
| Scientists have spent plenty of time thinking about how humans communicate emotion in non-verbal ways, the signals that we’ve evolved for other members of the species.See more at blog.wired.com |
| Don’t think too much before purchasing that new car or television. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who deliberate about decisions make less accurate judgments than people who trust their instincts. |
| “Whether evaluating abstract objects (Chinese ideograms) or actual consumer items (paintings, apartments, and jellybeans), people who deliberated on their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” write authors Loran F. Nordgren (Northwestern University) and Ap Dijksterhuis (Radboud University, The Netherlands). |
| Looking at yourself in the mirror every morning, you never think to question whether the person you see is actually you. |
| You feel familiar-at home with your own unique self image. After all, you have been sporting the same old face for years. |
| challenges this common-sense notion about our own self image. |
| The study reveals that recognition of our own face is not as consistent as we might think. The participants’ ability to recognise their own face changed when they watched the face of another person being touched at the same time as their own face was touched, as though they were looking in a mirror. |
| Specifically, when asked to recognize a picture of their own face, the picture that people chose included features of the other person they had previously seen. This did not happen when the two faces were touched out of synchrony. |
| Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brain-once thought to be a seriously flawed decision maker-is actually hard-wired to allow us to make the best decisions possible with the information we are given. The findings are published in today’s issue of the journal Neuron. |
| Neuroscientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky received a 2002 Nobel Prize for their 1979 research that argued humans rarely make rational decisions. Since then, this has become conventional wisdom among cognition researchers
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| Contrary to Kahnneman and Tversky’s research, Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has shown that people do indeed make optimal decisions-but only when their unconscious brain makes the choice.
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| Once we started looking at the decisions our brains make without our knowledge, we found that they almost always reach the right decision, given the information they had to work with.See more at www.brainmysteries.com |
| Nearly 50 years after one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a social psychologist has found that people are still just as willing to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks to others when urged on by an authority figure. |
| Milgram found that, after hearing the learner’s first cries of pain at 150 volts, 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks; of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator’s end, at 450 volts. |
| People learning about Milgram’s work often wonder whether results would be any different today,” said Burger, a professor at Santa Clara University. “Many point to the lessons of the Holocaust and argue that there is greater societal awareness of the dangers of blind obedience. But what I found is the same situational factors that affected obedience in Milgram’s experiments still operate today |
| People are mistaken when they expect that the more they spend on gifts, the more those gifts will be appreciated |
| It’s enough to give pause to any financially strapped Santa Claus, and perhaps elicit his applause. Don’t worry about cutting back on holiday gift spending during hard times for fear of disappointing others, at least if they’re grown-ups. |
| People appreciate receiving modestly priced gifts as much as they do expensive ones, although gift givers typically don’t realize it, a new study indicates. |
| For as yet unclear reasons, gift givers are frequently unable to use their own experience as gift receivers to identify especially meaningful gifts for friends and loved ones |
| People assume that the more they spend on presents, the more those presents will be appreciated, but we find that that’s not the case |
| This result raises the intriguing implication that lavish gifts are often viewed by their recipients as ostentatious gestures rather than generous ones.See more at www.sciencenews.org |
| Romantic relationships establish special bonds between partners. |
| Oftentimes, passionate rapport leads to permanent partnerships, and ultimately, the start of families. |
| Sometimes, however, one or both partners place too much emotional weight on their relationship. |
| As a result, men or women may tend to evaluate their self-worth solely based on the outcomes of their romantic interactions |
| This is what psychologists term as relationship-contingent self-esteem (RCSE), and, according to University of Houston researcher Chip Knee, it’s an unhealthy factor in romantic relationships |
| Individuals with high levels of RCSE are very committed to their relationships, but they also find themselves at risk to become devastated when something goes wrong — even a relatively minor event |
| An overwhelming amount of the wrong kind of commitment can actually undermine a relationship |
| The next time you have to make a difficult moral decision, you might think twice about mulling it over in the bath or shower. |
| New research in Psychological Science has found that the physical notion of cleanliness significantly reduces the severity of moral judgments showing that intuition, rather than deliberate reasoning, can influence our perception of what is right and wrong. |
| “When we exercise moral judgment, we believe we are making a conscious, rational decision, but this research shows that we are subconsciously influenced by how clean or ‘pure’ we feel. |
| “Take for example the situation of a jury member or voting in an election - if the jury member had washes their hands prior to delivering their verdict, they may judge the crime less harshly.” |
| Similarly, someone may find it easier to overlook a political misdemeanor had they performed an action that made them feel ‘clean’ prior to casting their vote.”See more at www.scientificblogging.com |
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