Unclaimed prize information increases the appeal of scratch card games

Abstract

Previous research suggests that intuitively appealing, yet uninformative unclaimed prize information is capable of biasing gamblingrelated judgments when people compare scratch cards that vary in the number of unclaimed prizes. However, it is unknown if the mere presence of unclaimed prize information alters a game's attractiveness. Using an online crowdsourcing platform, we recruited 402 U.S. residents to participate in an online study. In a withinsubjects design, participants made four gambling-related judgments (likelihood of winning, excitement to play, urge to gamble, and hypothetical card purchasing) for scratch cards presented with and without unclaimed prize information. Compared to cards presented without unclaimed prize information, those with unclaimed prize information were judged as more likely to win, produced more excitement to play, a greater urge to gamble, and were chosen more often during a hypothetical purchasing task. Therefore, unclaimed prize information increases the appeal of scratch card games, and may be an important aspect of the scratch card gambling environment to consider from a harm reduction perspective.

Push Outcomes Bias Perceptions of Scratch Card Games

“…Therefore, Studies 1 and 2 suggest that the decision to categorize push outcomes as wins can bias peoples' judgments of a scratch card game, even when this categorization is made salient. This finding is consistent with previous work demonstrating peoples' non-optimal use of scratch card game information (Horn et al, 2021;Muda et al, 2020;Stange et al, 2021;Walker et al, 2018Walker et al, , 2019. Thus, despite lottery operators presenting information that allows gamblers to generate informed perceptions of scratch card games, gamblers may often fail to properly utilize this information to form accurate impressions and preferences.…”

“…While a discerning and motivated gambler can use the information presented by lottery operators to generate accurate perceptions of scratch card games, past work suggests that people often fail to properly utilize such information (Horn et al, 2021;Muda et al, 2020;Stange et al, 2021;Walker et al, 2018Walker et al, , 2019. For example, the presentation of unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) has been shown to guide scratch card preferences (Muda et al, 2020;Walker et al, 2018Walker et al, , 2019 and increase the appeal of scratch card games (Stange et al, 2021). Notably, this influence occurs despite such information being uninformative to gamblers aiming to maximize their chances of monetary gain.…”

Using Icon Arrays to Communicate Gambling Information Reduces the Appeal of Scratch Card Games

“…Recent work investigating unclaimed prize information bias (Muda et al, 2020;Stange et al, 2021;Walker et al, 2018Walker et al, , 2019 suggests that gamblers may often over-attend to the number of prizes available (e.g., unclaimed prize information), paying less attention to the seemingly less salient number of losing cards or the informative ratio of winning to losing cards. Research on denominator neglect paints a similar picture, with individuals being overly influenced by how often an event has happened, paying insufficient attention to the total number of opportunities it had to occur (Denes-Raj et al, 1995;Reyna, 2004;Reyna & Brainerd, 2008).…”

Negativity bias in intergroup contact: Meta-analytical evidence that bad is stronger than good, especially when people have the opportunity and motivation to opt out of contact.

“…Individuals should actively opt into a contact experience (or elect not to avoid it) only when they have reasonable expectations for a sufficiently productive and safe experience. Also, people should be particularly motivated to discover that valence after they have “gambled” on it under high uncertainty at decision time (e.g., see Stange, 2021). Moreover, the very act of pondering and deliberating about whether to engage in contact or not should increase attention, encoding, and retrieval of those experiences, relative to experiences that are unconditionally available.…”