Near‐wins and near‐losses in gambling: A behavioral and facial EMG study

Abstract

This study investigated responses to near-wins (i.e., nonwin outcomes that were close to a major win, and their counterpart, near-losses (nonwin outcomes that are proximal to a major loss) in a decision-making task, measuring (a) luck ratings, (b) adjustment of bet amount, and (c) facial muscle reactivity at zygomaticus and corrugator sites. Compared to full-misses, near-wins decreased self-perceived luck and near-losses increased self-perceived luck, consistent with the effects of upward versus downward counterfactual thinking, respectively. Wins and losses both increased zygomaticus reactivity, and losses selectively enhanced corrugator reactivity. Near-wins heightened zygomaticus activity, but did not affect corrugator activity, thus showing a similar response pattern to actual wins. There were no significant facial EMG effects of near-losses. We infer that near-wins engender some appetitive processing, despite their objective nonwin status.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 37 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.