评论
打印
In 2018, the US Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into the video game industry.
2018年，美国联邦贸易委员会对视频游戏行业展开调查。
Why?
为什么要这么做呢？
Because of microtransactions in games that look a little too much like gambling.
因为游戏中的微交易看起来有点像赌博。
Players are buying and selling lootboxes that might be filled with valuable powerups and skins that can be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars -- and we mean real dollars.
玩家买卖的战利品盒子里可能装满了价值数百甚至数千美元的能量和皮肤——我们指的是真正的美元。
And while you might hear horror stories thrown about on social media about what this is doing to young people’s brains, the phenomenon is new enough that research is only just starting to come in.
虽然你可能会在社交媒体上听到关于这对年轻人大脑造成影响的恐怖故事，但是这一现象已经足够鲜活，这方面的研究才刚刚开始。
What has been extensively studied, however, is old-school gambling.
然而，被广泛研究的是老派的赌博方式。
Slot machines and the like.
老虎机之类的。
These games can be fine-tuned to keep you playing… and take your money.
这些游戏可以进行微调，让你继续玩，然后拿走你的钱。
In fact, we know a great deal about how your brain reacts to gambling games -- and what that tells us about how game designers can manipulate your behavior.
事实上，我们非常了解大脑对赌博游戏的反应，以及游戏设计者如何操纵你的行为。
One of the first psychological principles related to these games is something taught in just about every intro psych class: schedules of reinforcement.
与这些游戏相关的第一批心理学原则之一，是几乎每门心理学入门课都要教授的内容：强化时间表。
Basically, they’re an answer to the question: how much should you reward a behavior to get more of it?
基本上，它们是回答一个问题的答案：你应该奖励一个行为多少钱，才能让它出现得更多？
Paradoxically, if you want a behavior to continue after you stop reinforcing it, you should be more unpredictable in your rewards.
自相矛盾的是，如果你想要一种行为在停止强化之后继续下去，你应该在奖励时更加不可预测。
The version of this used in gambling is called a variable reinforcement schedule.
赌博中使用的这个版本称为可变强化计划。
When a behavior finally stops, psychologists call that extinction.
当一种行为最终停止时，心理学家称之为灭绝。
If a behavior has been rewarded on a variable reinforcement schedule, it takes longer for that behavior to go extinct after you stop giving rewards.
如果一个行为在可变的强化计划中得到奖励，在停止奖励之后，这个行为需要更长的时间才能消失。
It works because if you do a thing and get rewarded every time and then the rewards stop, you might get frustrated and think that something has changed.
它之所以有效，是因为如果你做了一件事，每次都得到奖励，随后奖励停止了，你可能会感到沮丧，认为有些事情已经改变了。
But if it happens sometimes, and you don’t know exactly when, you learn that persistence is what makes the reward happen.
但如果它有时发生，而你不知道确切的时间，你就会明白，坚持才是奖励发生的原因。
That you have to keep trying, rather than only doing the thing once.
你必须不断尝试，而不是只做一次。
This is exactly what goes on with slot machine games, which we’ve known about since studies dating back to the 1960s.
这正是老虎机游戏的特点，我们从20世纪60年代开始研究时就知道了。
In one of these early studies, when three hundred twenty kids were assigned to play a slot machine game,
在早期的一项研究中，当320个孩子被分配去玩老虎机游戏时，
kids who got a win just a third of the time would end up playing much longer after the game stopped paying out than those who got a win every time.
那些只在三分之一的时间中赢了的孩子，在游戏停止后玩的时间会比那些每次都赢的孩子长得多。
Researchers also varied how many pulls of the lever they got before the machine stopped paying out --and with fewer pulls, it was much more effective at keeping kids playing.
研究人员还改变了他们在机器停止工作前所得到的杠杆拉力的大小，而且用更少的拉力，可以更有效地让孩子们玩耍。
The kids who wound up playing the longest were those who only got in a single win before the slot machine stopped paying out.
玩得最久的孩子是那些在老虎机停止付款前只赢了一场的孩子。
So when a gambling game gives players some kind of payout early on, it can keep them hooked for a while.
所以，当一个赌博游戏在一开始让玩家赢一些钱，就能让他们有段时间都上瘾。
Another thing that leads people to stick to these games is the idea of flow -- that's that in-the-zone feeling people get when they're absorbed in a challenging task.
另一个能让人们坚持玩这些游戏的是“流动”的概念，即当人们专注于一项具有挑战性的任务时，他们所能感受到的区域感。
And it looks like people experience flow when they gamble.
看起来人们在赌博时会体验到流动的感觉。
A 2017 study surveyed five hundred volunteers who participated in online gambling.
2017年的一项研究调查了500名参与在线赌博的志愿者。
They found that among those who reported symptoms of gambling addiction, there were also signs of flow --specifically losing track of time, and an immersive satisfaction with the experience.
他们发现，在那些报告有赌博成瘾症状的人中，也存在流动的迹象。特别是失去时间的轨迹，以及对体验的沉浸式满足感。
Flow is usually associated with skilled tasks.
流动通常与熟练性任务相关联。
And though they didn't ask about it in the 2017 study, other research suggests that people who are gambling can act like they’re using a skill even when they aren’t.
尽管他们在2017年的研究中没有询问这一点，但其他研究表明，赌博的人可以表现得像在使用一种技能，即使他们并没有这种技能。
Like, people will pay more for a lottery ticket if they can pick the numbers themselves instead of having the numbers assigned to them, even though it’s obviously the same odds of winning.
比如，如果人们可以自己选择号码而不是把号码分配给他们，那么他们会花更多的钱买彩票，尽管中奖的几率显然是一样的。
People will also bet less on a dice roll if it’s one that’s already happened and they just haven’t seen the result yet.
如果掷过了骰子，但还没看到结果，他们也会下更少的注。
Those are the kind of things you’d expect people to do if they thought they had some control over the outcome -- which, of course, they don’t. These things are random.
如果人们认为他们对结果有一定的控制权，可以预期他们会去做这些事情。当然，他们没有控制权，这些事情是随机的。
And though lots of psychologists look at flow as a positive state, the fact that it might play a role in addictive behaviors has led to them coining the term dark flow.
尽管许多心理学家把流动看作是一种积极的状态，但事实上它可能在成瘾行为中起到一定的作用。因此，他们创造出“暗流”这个词。
It’s not just a problem with gambling -- it's also been a part of people's experience with social media addiction and internet gaming, particularly multiplayer online games.
这不仅仅是赌博的问题，也是人们对社交媒体上瘾和网络游戏，特别是多人在线游戏体验的一部分。
One last thing that keeps people coming back to games of chance is what researchers call a near miss.
研究人员称之为“未遂事件”的是让人们重玩这种运气游戏。
On a typical slot machine, you want to get three matching symbols to win.
在一个典型的老虎机上，你需要三个符号相匹配才能获胜。
So imagine if the first two line up to give you a jackpot, but then the third jackpot lands just above the winning row.
所以，想象一下，如果前两排给你一个头奖。但是，第三个头奖刚好落在入选行的上方。
That's a near miss.
这是个未遂事件。
And you can get them in other games, too -- like picking up a lootbox with a powerful weapon that just doesn't work for your character.
你也可以在其他游戏中得到它们，比如用一个强大的武器捡起一个对你的角色不起作用的战利品箱。
Psychologists think that even though these things aren't really a win for the player, they reinforce our behavior kind of like a win does.
心理学家认为，尽管这些事情对玩家来说并不是真正的胜利，但它们会像胜利一样强化我们的行为。
It's kind of like an unconscious signal to "keep going, your strategy is working!" ...even if your "strategy" is pulling a lever.
这有点像一个无意识的信号，“继续前进，你的策略在起作用！”即使你的“策略”是拉动把手。
One 2001 study showed that if you make about 30% of slot machine spins a near miss, you'll maximize how long people will keep playing in the absence of any reinforcement -- better than either fifteen percent or 45%.
一项2001的研究表明，如果你让大约30%的老虎机旋转出未遂事件，你将最大限度地延长人们在没有任何强化的情况下继续玩的时间，比50%或45%更好。
What makes this work is that different parts of your brain react to wins and losses, and a near miss kind of involves both.
这项工作的原因是，你大脑的不同部分对输赢做出反应，而一个未遂事件涉及到两者。
And not everyone’s brain responds the same way.
不是每个人的大脑都有同样的反应。
When non-gamblers play slot machines while having their brains scanned, getting a near-miss activates regions of the brain that look like a regular loss.
当非赌徒玩老虎机时去扫描他们的大脑，未遂事件会激活大脑中看起来像是正常输掉游戏的区域。
But when people with symptoms of pathological gambling experience a near-miss, their brain looks more like it just got a win.
但当有病态赌博症状的人经历了一次未遂事件时，他们的大脑看起来更像是刚刚赢得一次游戏。
But that's not the whole story.
但这不是全部。
For example, one 2014 study compared twenty-four people who showed signs of pathological gambling to twenty-four controls as they played computer slots while having their brains scanned by functional MRI.
例如，2014年的一项研究将24名出现病理性赌博迹象的人，与24名玩电脑老虎机的人进行对比。同时，对他们的大脑进行了功能性核磁共振扫描。
When any of the participants won, a region of the brain called the ventral striatum was activated.
当任何一个参与者获胜时，大脑中一个叫做腹侧纹状体的区域被激活。
That’s a region found to be involved with reward response.
这是一个与奖励反应有关的区域。
That region was also activated for near misses -- but only in the healthy controls.
该区域也被未遂事件激活，但仅限于健康对照组。
The researchers had predicted the opposite -- after all, you might expect a pathological gambler to get more reward from this near-win.
研究人员的预测正好相反。毕竟，你可能会期望一个病态的赌徒从这场险胜中获得更多的回报。
So they guessed that maybe the pathological gamblers had just blunted their response to this non-win over time.
所以，他们猜测也许病态的赌徒，只是降低了他们对于随着时间的推移而不赢的反应。
It also might work the other way: the smaller reward response means the gambler isn't experiencing enough reward from their almost-win --and so they need to keep going.
这也可能有另一种效果：较小的奖励反应意味着赌徒没有从他们几乎赢了的游戏中获得足够的奖励，因此他们需要继续下去。
Whereas in the healthy controls, the brain reacts like almost winning is just as good as actually winning.
而在健康的对照组中，大脑的反应就像几乎获胜一样好。
It’s kind of like this near miss has a specific effect on people with pathological gambling symptoms
有点像这样，未遂事件对有病理性赌博症状的人有特殊影响。
-- part of the brain says you’re not being rewarded enough, but another part of the brain says you need to keep pushing.
大脑的一部分说你没有得到足够的回报，但另一部分说你需要继续努力。
So are microtransactions in online games... gambling?
网络游戏中的微交易也是如此，这是赌博吗？
Some studies suggest they are, and that people with gambling problems are more susceptible to spending money on loot boxes in games.
一些研究表明，有赌博问题的人更容易在游戏中花钱买战利品盒子。
But that research is pretty new.
但是，这项研究是很新。
For now, what we can say is that old school gambling, like slot machines, is a perfect storm of things
现在，我们能说的是，老虎机一样的老派赌博是一场完美的风暴，
that keep your brain coming back or more, and some people develop real, serious addictions.
让你的大脑不断想接着玩更多的游戏。有些人发展出真正的、严重性上瘾症。
So we can keep our eyes peeled for similar phenomena in newer games -- and maybe a tighter grip on our wallets when we see them.
所以，我们可以在新的游戏中留意类似的现象。也许在看到它们时，可能会把钱包握得更紧些。
And if you’re working for one of these gaming companies, and you see research being done internally that you don’t see as particularly ethical,
如果你在这些游戏公司中的一家工作，看到公司内部正在进行的研究，而你认为这些研究不是特别合乎道德，
there are people you can reach out to tell about that.
你可以联系一些人来告诉他们。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych, and thanks especially to our patrons who make what we do possible.
感谢收看本期《心理科学秀》节目，特别感谢我们的赞助人，是他们让我们的节目成为可能。
If you want to help us make cool videos and score yourself some awesome perks, consider supporting us at patreon.com/scishow.
如果你想帮助我们制作酷炫的视频，并为自己赢得一些超赞的奖励，请考虑在patreon.com/scishow上支持我们。
