Slot Machines and PsychologyĪ machine that just takes money and does nothing else would unlikely succeed, so the way slot machines have worked around that hurdle is offering a theoretical chance to win money, even if you lose money on the machine in the long run.Īnd that chance makes people play the machines. That’ll be all the psychological factors. Since playing slot machines seems insane on paper, what makes slot players spend so much money on these machines that are often referred to as one-armed bandits? A slot machine simply takes a dollar and gives 80-98 cents back (it’s rare to find a slot machine with a payback of over 98%).īut, of course, it does this in the long run.