If you think gambling is just for gamblers, think again! Most researchers have been using gambling as an important tool to find out how we take risks, make decisions and how our brain responds to personal gains and losses. And some researchers have even been using it to get deeper insights into the psychology of gambling itself! Here are two recent researches whose results are bound to take you by surprise.

First is the research conducted by Wellesley College psychologist Erik Schlicht and his colleagues which examined how our opponents’ faces influence the way we bet in poker. In the study, Schlicht had taken 14 adult participants who were mostly novices. They were asked to sit down at computers and on the screens could be seen the participant’s two-card starting hand, his computer opponent (any one of 100 digitally animated faces), and two poker chips representing each player’s bets. The participants had to decide whether to give up (fold) or play their hand (call). Giving up would make the participant lose 100 chips while calling would let him win or lose 5000 chips depending on whether he had the winning hand or not.

Different expressions were shown to the player in the game ranging from trustworthy to neutral while the values of his hands were kept equal to ensure that he took decisions based solely on his opponent’s face . And guess which expression was able to fool participants the most? The trustworthy expression! It forced people to take their time, make more mistakes and even fold frequently. So, the lesson to be learned here is that the next time you play poker, appear trustworthy! But, since this study was conducted taking novices, the fact that trustworthy expressions throw-off games cannot be taken as a certainty.

Likewise, another gambling study conducted by Josep Marco-Pallarés has also given some pretty shocking results. In the study, pairs of participants were set up in front of computers (one participant always served as the gambler while the other as a mere spectator) whose screens repeatedly displayed two numbers: 25 and 5. For each right number (among the two) picked by the gambler, he would win Euro cents corresponding to the number while the wrong number made him lose an amount equivalent to the number chosen.

With the help of electrode nets placed on the scalps of both gamblers and spectators, electroencephalography (EEG) were used to measure characteristic brain responses to applied stimuli. The active gamblers were expected to have, and did have, distinct brain responses to successful and unsuccessful wagers but it was the spectators’ responses that the experimenters wanted to study. So, different situations were imposed.

First, both the gambler and spectator lost or gained Euro cents together while the case was the opposite in the second situation (i.e. if the gambler lost, the spectator won and vice versa). And as anticipated, the brain responses of both in the first situation mirrored each other’s while they opposed in the second. However, what was surprising was that even though the spectators did not lose or gain anything in the third situation (despite knowing they would receive the maximum amount of bonus money irrespective of the gambler’s outcome), their brains reacted as though they had lost money too. Though unsure, Marco-Pallarés, suspects that it’s because of the emphatic system in us.

So, the lesson from this study: gambling addicts return to their old ways while watching others play because of the reactivation of the same neural systems that encoded their addiction in the first place and in a broader sense, even when we are mere spectators, our brains act as performers.