Illusory personal control as a determinant of bet size and type in casino craps games

Langer's (1974, 1975) theory regarding the conditions under which subjects performing a chance task will suffer from an illusion of control over the o utcome has specified 6 conditions proposed to enhance the illusion of contr ol in chance tasks. A number of studies have applied her theory and predict ions to gambling, a real-world arena of chance tasks where participants hav e been observed to act as if the outcomes are controllable by the use of va rious "logical" (acting on the "gambler's fallacy") and superstitious strat egies (e.g., blowing on dice). Thus far, however, these studies have not be en conducted in naturalistic gaming environments and have yielded mixed res ults regarding the operation of the illusion of control. The present resear ch offers the first study of the operation of the illusion of control in su ch a real-world context. In order to examine the effects of active vs, pass ive task participation (a variable hypothesized by Langer to affect the ill usion of control), patrons of Reno casinos were observed placing craps bets on their own and another yoked patron's dice rolls. It was hypothesized th at subjects would (a) place higher bets and (b) place more "difficult" bets (e.g, where only one specific number, as opposed to any of several numbers , may win) on their own rolls (when they would experience the illusion of c ontrol over the outcome) than on other patrons' roles (when they would not experience such an illusion). That is, players were expected to generally a dopt riskier betting strategies when throwing the dice. Results supported t he hypotheses.