Music and Gambling
Many people have mixed feelings about gambling. For some it is a fun and exciting endeavor, others, however, view it as foolish and risky. Scott Adams made an interesting point between the similarities of a casino and life. Scott Adams phrased it like this “The world is like a reverse casino. In a casino, if you gamble long enough, you’re certainly going to lose. But in the real world, where the only thing you’re gambling is, say, your time or your embarrassment, then the more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you.” If you think about it in a certain respect life is a lot like gambling, so even if you don’t personally gamble it may be wise to understand potential influences.
In previous blogs, we have discussed how the volume of music can greatly impact certain behaviors, particularly eating habits. Studies showed that music played at varying volumes can cause a person to select healthy or unhealthy dietary options depending on the volume. If music can have such impacts over a person’s dietary choices, then surely music must impact over gambling as well?
One study entitled ‘An Empirical Investigation of Music and Gambling Behavior’ by Laura Dixon, Richard Trigg, and Mark Griffiths examined the relationship between background music tempo and betting impulsivity. According to the study, there was no correlation between music tempo and betting, however, in another study titled ‘Type of musical soundtrack affects behavior in gambling’ by Rune A. Mentzoni, Jon Christian Laberg, Geri Scott Brunborg, Helge Molde, and Pallesn Stale examined the same relationship. Unlike the first study, this study had an interesting finding. According to their results, low tempo background music was associated with an increased betting pace.
More research is probably needed to truly tell if and how music may impact betting rates and impulsivity, however being aware that there could possibly be a link could be advantageous should you ever decide to gamble.