“Something tells me it’s all happenin’ at the zoo
I do believe it. I do believe it’s true.” — Simon & Garfunkel

My wife and I go to a casino now and then. Sometimes I watch the action as people bet money to try to hit on one game or another; most of it is an attempt to match a randomly generated number.

Most card games, slot machines, dice, roulette, and other games of chance are based on randomly generated numbers. I wondered why such a great number of people found gambling so appealing.

Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., a professor at University of California and author of some fine books on natural history (A Primate’s Memoir, Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Stress & others), has some of his lectures on YouTube, and not long ago I watched one I found very interesting, “The Science of Pleasure.” One involved an experiment that had to do with dopamine, the pleasure hormone.

Subjects (monkeys) were provided with devices that contained a covered tray attached to a long handle.  They could pull the handle and get the tray into their cages. Upon opening the tray, they would find a grape. Measurements showed they would have a spike of dopamine upon finding the treat.

Next, a bell was introduced. The bell would sound when the handle of the covered tray was placed within reach of the monkey. After a few repetitions, the dopamine was released into the monkey’s bloodstream when the bell would sound.

Then the experiment changed yet again. The bell would sound, the subject would pull the tray into his/her cage, and there would — or would not — be a grape treat. The interesting part of this was that that not only did the dopamine continue with the sounding of the bell, it doubled in quantity. This suggested, rather convincingly in my opinion, that the excitement of not knowing what an outcome might be was much more thrilling – even more pleasurable — than that of a consistent system of reward.

I spent a bit of time at a roulette table once, waiting for my wife as she gambled on slot machines. No one else was at the table when I sat down. The “dealer” said it was good to have someone at her table even if I wasn’t gambling; the bosses didn’t like to see a table empty. Sometimes people would come up, play the game a while, and drift away. I would sit quietly, sip my beer, and wish the players luck as they watched the ball drop onto the spinning wheel.  Some won, some lost.

Roulette has a ball that drops onto a spinning wheel, where it bounces around a bit, and falls into a numbered depression.  The numbers are 1 through 18. There are red numbers and black numbers. There are also depressions that are numbered 0 and 00; those two are neither red nor black, but are green.

Essentially, there are 40 spots for the ball to fall (18 red, 18 black, the 0 & the 00, red and black). If you place a single bet on a single number, say Red 12, there is one chance in 40 that the ball will end up in that spot. If it does, you win. You are paid $35 for betting the number correctly.

Why would someone take a 1 in 40 chance of placing a bet that will pay 35 to 1? A hunch? A special number? Feeling lucky?

But Sapolsky’s findings suggest something else is going on. The thrill is in the risk, the not-knowing, the gamble. Something good might happen. Something bad might happen. Perhaps you had a dream last night where 12 red cardinals came to your bird feeder; 12 – Red; it must mean something, right?

People spend hours trying to catch a fish to eat.  It would be faster and easier to go to the store and buy fish. Sapolsky’s findings indicate that more dopamine is released by the very uncertainly of the chase. You might get a reward. Or not. You don’t know.

Assuming one is not a compulsive gambler, these activities are fun entertainment for many people. You get the release of your body’s pleasure hormone, dopamine. The process is entertaining, and, though the odds favor the house, you just might get lucky and win something. A grape is a sweet reward, but some cash in hand is always nice.