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01-12-2007 | Original Paper

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Something: The Impact of Autonomic Arousal on EGM Gambling

Authors: Matthew Justus Rockloff, Tania Signal, Victoria Dyer

Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies | Issue 4/2007

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to observe the influence of autonomic arousal on subsequent gambling behavior. Thirty-seven male and 32 female regular Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) players were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Participants were randomly assigned to either: (1) a control condition, or (2) an experimental condition that introduced a loud white-noise event (80 db) at fixed 120 s intervals throughout the 5-min EGM gambling session. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) measurements showed that the manipulation was successful in elevating autonomic arousal. The results showed differences in behavioral response to the manipulation based on prior experience with gambling problems. Persons with many gambling problems had lower average bet-sizes in the white-noise condition compared to the control, while those with few or no problems had higher average bet-sizes. The results suggest that arousal may provide different signals to gamblers with few versus many problems. Gamblers with many problems may interpret their arousal as a sign that they will soon lose money, while gamblers with few or no problems may associate feelings of arousal exclusively with winning.

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Title: Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Something: The Impact of Autonomic Arousal on EGM Gambling
Authors: Matthew Justus Rockloff
Tania Signal
Victoria Dyer
Publication date: 01-12-2007
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies / Issue 4/2007
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3602
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-007-9061-9

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Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Something: The Impact of Autonomic Arousal on EGM Gambling

Abstract

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