Gambling and Compulsion: Neurobiology Meets Casinos

Slot MachinesBy Jarred Carter, Andrew Cavanagh, Elizabeth Olveda, and Meredith Ragany

Vegas baby, Vegas!

So you’ve finally made it out to Sin City, setting aside a few hundreds dollars to gamble. Maybe even a thousand. You’re hoping to get lucky and have some fun. A few hours and a half-dozen drinks into your weekend, you find yourself at the craps table, dice in hand. You’re feeling good, ready to turn your recent down streak into big bucks. Where does that leave you?
Right where the casino wants you.

The game is rigged. Everyone loses money eventually, if not immediately. But just like gamblers grab hold of that lever and pull, society has stepped up to the gambling craze. And now gambling is pulling people for all they’re worth: emotionally, mentally and, most notably, financially.

This post will look more closely at casino’s techniques to draw gamblers back to the slot chairs and the tables, focusing on both physiological aspects and engaged decision making. Ultimately, these observations will demonstrate that casinos create more than entertainment; they develop an entire compulsive experience.

The Gambler’s Rush

The casino’s greatest asset might be the very personal, very intense rush that gamblers experience as they step up to the blackjack table or slot machine, hoping to strike it rich. This characteristic “rush” or “high” stems from the series of steps and actions that are involved in addictive behavior. Stimulation from the surrounding atmosphere and the thrill of a big risk drives the “high”. Ultimately, the “rush” from gambling can be as intense as a drug fix.

Dealing Emotions

Excitement, making a quick buck, or even the possibility of financial independence is enticing. From experience, most people know that emotions are difficult to control. From a neurological standpoint, the amygdala is situated in the limbic system and is one main centers of emotion (pdf) in the human brain. Other parts of the brain, like the prefontal cortex, display less activity (pdf) during the act of gambling.

Continue reading “Gambling and Compulsion: Neurobiology Meets Casinos”

Why Do They Do It? Portrayals of Alcohol on Facebook and MySpace

“I’m so much cooler online…Yeah I’m cooler online…”
– Brad Paisley, Online

By David Patterson, Elizabeth Kuzmich, Francis Verhaegen, and Natalie Leopold
Facebook Cheer
Why do they do it? Why do otherwise smart and savvy college and high school student post photos of themselves drinking and partying on Facebook and MySpace? To the right is just one. There are many more, some of them a lot more, um… revealing than this one.

Facebook/MySpace and the pictures posted on these websites represent a microcosm of social life. It is true that college students drink more often and in higher quantities than any other age group. Their lives include class, work, homework, club meetings…and partying. Many times, pictures of fraternity parties and keggers do not portray college students accurately. In other words, these students choose to portray only certain aspects of their lives on the Internet.

Thus, the pictures posted on Facebook/MySpace only represent some of these activities, specifically partying. For the same reason that website profiles of older adults often feature their wives and children, the profiles of college students feature what they believe is the most interesting, or ‘coolest,’ part of their life – having fun while partying and drinking.

Pictures of drinking and partying are interesting to their peers. The college social scene revolves around attending bars and fraternity parties. Just as the public looks to celebrities for cues on what to wear, where to go, and how to act, young adults look to their peers to see what are the best parties and activities, which are illustrated on Facebook/MySpace. It is unlikely that a college student would post a picture of himself or herself in the library or working at the ice cream shop.

Facebook/MySpace allows for the creation of new or altered identity and the presentation of this identity to others. Individuals can portray themselves as social, attractive, and popular by posting pictures of themselves surrounded by friends at a party. In theory, this makes them more desirable to the other sex and ‘cooler’ to their peers.

Examining the Profiles

In order to take a closer look at the prevalence of alcohol-related pictures in Facebook and MySpace profiles, 25 Facebook profiles and 25 MySpace profiles were randomly selected from a large pool of male and female individuals using a random numbers generator. The users’ ages varied from 17 to 25, essentially the average aged college students. From these profiles, the photo albums were inspected to determine whether they were alcohol or party related. Pictures containing beer cans, bottles, or handles of liquor or those taken in a bar or party setting or other miscellaneous drinking activities counted towards an “alcohol-related” picture or photo album.

Continue reading “Why Do They Do It? Portrayals of Alcohol on Facebook and MySpace”

Student Posts Coming

Just like last year, groups of students from my class Alcohol and Drugs: The Anthropology of Substance Use and Abuse have put together some great posts to share with the world. This year had more of a compulsion and culture theme, looking at “addictions” in areas besides drugs and alcohol as well as the impact of music and the internet on our everyday involvements. I’ll put the first post up later today, and then go more-or-less one a day until I get through all nine.

The posts represent quality work by the students. The students developed their own arguments and ideas, and did the background research themselves. I don’t always agree with them, and that’s good – all part of academic discourse.

Last year’s posts proved very popular. The one on brain imaging is in our Top Ten overall, and another on the genetic and environmental bases of addiction is in the top twenty. All told, the eight posts have been read more than 13,000 times!

The students covered a range of topics last year, from post-conventional outlaws and the drug war to college binge drinking and gender, stress and addiction and inequality and addiction, and finally on denial and disease and on age limits on drinking.

To see all of last’s years posts, check out Why A Final Essay When We Can Do This?

Sorting Stones

Sorting Stones
Sorting Out Science is hosting the latest Four Stone Hearth, gathering together the best of recent anthropology blogging.

The lead is the entire Pig in the Garden Series, covering the recent Jared Diamond and New Yorter controversy. If I had to pick one piece for this audience, it would be Nancy Sullivan’s ‘Light Elephants’ and Dark Revenge In The New Yorker: The Problems of Amateur Anthropology. Besides covering ethical concerns, she brings a deep ethnographic appreciation from a more psychological/cultural anthropology angle of how revenge actually works in Papua New Guinea.

Then there are big boobs featured in the media (yes, the recent venus figurine – Sorting Science has three solid pieces on this discovery); plus the recent Neanderthals got eaten by humans controversy is dismantled; some hot joe on head shaping and trepination; and much more.

A stand-out edition! So go check out Sorting Science’s Four Stone Hearth.

Hosting Encephalon – Send Submissions

Cajal cerebellum
Hello everyone! Neuroanthropology will be hosting the mind/brain carnival Encephalon scheduled for this coming Monday, May 25th. Please send your submissions to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com

Given our anthropological slant, we do take a wide view of mind/brain materials, including psychological anthropology, mental health, cross-cultural variation in behavior, and so forth. We also like the hard-core brain stuff. So just send your good stuff!

For more info on Encephalon, see the Sharp Brain hosting site.

Looking forward to a great Encephalon!

Wednesday Round Up #64

So a few favs, then some more complicated decision making, followed by anthro and the brain, and finished off with some very good stuff on our new lives online.

Top of the List

The Economist, Expats at Work
“Living abroad gives you a creative edge” – so anthropologists rule! See Jonah Lehrer’s nice riff on creativity and being abroad, as well as Greg Laden’s complement piece, Knowing More Languages = Good
Darwinius masillae
Tim Arango, The Missing Link, and a Mass Audience
Does that picture look like a missing link to you? Hyping science even as it’s in process. For a more detailed write-up on this basal primate fossil, see the new Wikipedia entry. PZ Myers also covers the basics while ranting about the “missing link” nonsense. Update: Greg Laden also summarizes and critiques in a very effective post on this new fossil nicknamed Ida.

Malcolm Gladwell, How David Beats Goliath
“When underdogs break the rules” – the Davids in the world win on a fairly consistent basis. So how?

Scott Horton, A Convenient Death
Death in a Libyan prison and a key person gone from the center of the torture debate

Decision Making

Psique, What Is Rewarding Brain Stimulation?
This YouTube clip on the development of research on electrical stimulation of the reward systems in the brain

Rachel Rettner, Monkeys Ponder What Could Have Been
Using imagined information to guide behavior, not simply direct experience of reward. Here’s the abstract for the actual Science article, Fictive reward signals in the anterior cingulated cortex

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #64”