Study: Casinos Use Blue-Heavy Light to Bamboozle Gamblers
Casinos and slot machine makers often get a bad rap for manipulating gamblers into gambling more than they’d like.
Urban myths include casinos installing ugly carpeting so players keep their eyes at slot level, along with the classic B.S. oxygen is pumped into casinos to give players a feeling of euphoria.
While those common misconceptions are baseless, a recent study shows circadian photoreception may affect cognitive processes underlying gambling behavior, encouraging reckless gambling habits, and no, we did not just copy that from a report on Nature.com, at all.
The bottom line: There seems to be a connection between blue-enriched light (common in LED screens, smartphone screens and casino interiors) and risky gambling behavior. As our fellow youths say, yikes.
Neon has always had an impact on our brain, but this is different.
Researchers at Flinders University, wherever that might be, have now shown that the lights flickering around you could be triggering a shift in your brain’s risk assessment mechanisms.
According to the study, these environmental cues can mess with how you process rewards and risks, pushing you to gamble more than you might normally.
You know, like Fireball, but lights.
The study involved 15 participants, who were tested by altering the blue content of light while maintaining the same visual brightness.
It’s hard to get too excited about a study that only had 15 test subjects, but the results are difficult to dismiss, especially when they involve so many big words.
Here’s the meat of the study: “Light has profound effects on cognition, enhancing alertness and attention through direct and indirect input to multiple brain regions. Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), a group of specialised retinal ganglion cells, contain the photopigment melanopsin and respond preferentially to short wavelength ‘blue’ light. Blue-enriched light typically exhibits the most considerable non-visual effects and is most effective for improving alertness, attention and subjective wellbeing. ipRGCs convey non-visual, largely non-conscious effects of light, projecting to brain regions involved in inhibitory control, risky decision-making, and emotion-regulation, including the inferior frontal gyrus, dorsal prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Light exposure can lead to suppression of activity in the amygdala12, which plays an important role in motivation and sensitivity to reward. The ability of light to suppress amygdala activity may reduce fear-related effects commonly associated with gambling. Furthermore, decreased activity of the habenula, a brain region involved in reward regulation, is associated with increased expectation of reward, and has been shown to be impacted by light exposure in humans. The ability of ipRGCs to suppress brain regions involved in decision-making and reward may enhance the encoding of rewarding stimuli while diminishing responses to loss. Consequently, light that preferentially activates ipRGCs could alter how likely someone is to engage in risky decision-making.”
Going out on a limb, but we’re pretty sure the person who wrote this report does not get laid very often. Although, there’s probably a retinal ganglion cell kink, so to each their own.
Light with more blue wavelengths influences how we perceive losses and gains. The study shows participants exposed to blue-enriched light became less sensitive to losses, making them more likely to choose risky financial options over safer alternatives.
Or, in the words of casino operators, “And this is a bad thing, how?”
Under bright, blue-heavy light, losses don’t sting as much. Using scientific parlance: Blue light dampens negative emotions associated with having one’s ass handed to them.
Another interesting result of the study: Women showed greater loss aversion than men, demonstrating more reluctance to take risks.
It’s not news men have a greater tolerance for risk, because you almost never hear a woman making the case for raw-dogging.
So, since we know blue light makes gamblers exhibit riskier behavior, casinos, online and off, will now just dim the “blue” to promote safer gambling behavior.
Wait, you actually fell for that? You’ve got to be kidding. Nobody’s dimming anything! All this nonsense about “responsible gaming” is just for show!
Casinos promote responsible gaming because casinos are stigmatized for being sleazy and taking advantage of people. They don’t want regulators or gambling critics to much around with their business practices. So they make those “When the Fun Stops” brochures available near cages and ATMs in casinos. They have entire pages of their Web site devoted to responsible gaming.
Let’s just say the casino industry wasn’t built on responsible gambling. Responsible gaming is a marketing ploy.
Those cocktails aren’t given away free because they inhibit gambling!
Everything casinos do is to get you to gamble and gamble longer.
That means it’s up to you to understand the dance. You are the boss of you, and you are the only one who can know what you’re comfortable gambling. You can get up and walk outside. You can dim your phone’s screen. You can lower your ATM withdrawal limit and limit your gambling to the cash you have on you.
You can read more about the blue light study here. Just take the whole “warping your brain” narrative with a grain of salt.
The effects of bluish light are subtle. We aren’t birds, TITO vouchers aren’t seeds and B.F. Skinner was a weirdo who raised his daughter in an experimental “air crib,” so there’s that.
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