The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits by Greenfield Kent

Author:Greenfield, Kent [Greenfield, Kent]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

4.

If you’ve ever been in a casino, you know that both money and hours can vanish without much apparent help on your part. Windows and clocks do not exist. Lighting does not change: it could be 3 o’clock in the afternoon or 3 o’clock in the morning. Attractive young women in sexy outfits offer free drinks as long as you play. Fresh air is pumped in continuously. When you win at the slots, lights flash and bells ring, and the slots that the casino calibrates to pay out at a higher rate are placed in high-traffic areas where more people will witness your victories. Brain scientists have shown that when we win at slots, our brain experiences a rush of pleasurable dopamine, and because of the randomness of winning our brain is unable to adapt to reduce the dopamine the next time.9

When you win at craps, other gamblers around the table win too, so you’re cheered onward and slapped on the back. Casinos track how much you gamble and give you extra benefits (such as free rooms) if you’re a high roller, like airlines giving frequent flier miles. Casinos are laid out like mazes, difficult to navigate, so you can’t walk through quickly. Ceilings are low, giving gamblers a sense of safety, intimacy, and privacy. Some casinos reportedly use “mood-influencing” aromas, to make us more open to the suggestion that we release our grip on our cash. Everything about the casino environment is crafted with sophistication intended to separate us from our money.

Perhaps the cleverest tactic is the use of chips. When you step up to a blackjack or craps table to gamble, the first thing you do is exchange your cash for chips. Then you bet with chips, in various denominations. I don’t gamble much, but when I do, I quickly stop thinking of chips as money. I throw down a twenty-five-dollar chip on a craps table much sooner than I would ever put down twenty-five dollars in cash. The cash seems real to me—and why risk my hard-earned cash on a roll of the dice?—but a chip is just a piece of plastic. I’m much more likely to gamble longer and for higher stakes than if I had to put cash on the table for each bet.10

There is no coercion in casinos (setting aside gambling addiction). Everyone there chooses to be there. But everything about the environment is constructed with the knowledge that people can be manipulated. Perhaps not every one of us, every time. But enough of us succumb often enough to make running a casino a winning proposition, and going to casinos a losing one. Casino owners drive Bentleys; habitual gamblers take the bus.

Casinos understand that human decision making is done in the contested space of our conscious and subconscious, habit and intention. Our rationality is a battleground, and casinos are smart and greedy enough to fight hard on that field.

Casinos are markets perfected, but choice perverted. Rather than being places where people coolly measure their

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