The Psychology of Music and Gambling: Why Both Are Great Together

Music is everywhere and this is to the point that we sometimes associate music with our daily activities or lives. Some would even say that music impacts their mood and activities strongly. There studies that prove how different activities are indeed impacted by music.

An example is how music can affect the gambling behavior of a person. Have you ever noticed the presence of music in casinos? It doesn’t matter if it’s an online casino or an actual casino establishment. As soon you enter a gambling place or site, you will immediately be welcomed by music. Sometimes, gamblers who are into music don’t even mind that they won’t get an instant withdrawal at casinos that pay. They sometimes just go to casinos with great music.

There were studies before that have proven that when shoppers are exposed to loud music inside a supermarket, how much they bought and their shopping rate is higher compared to when they are exposed to soft or quiet music. However, people would spend proportionally less time in the supermarket with loud music so they still found that the results are the same for the shop owner.

This is why there was speculation that how people spend on gambling can also be affected by music. A study about how music affects gambling found that music does have something to do with the behavior of people inside a gambling establishment and this is why operators are conscious about the music that they play.

They found that in the morning, easy listening music is played because the majority of their customers are older female people. Rock and dance music are played in the afternoon when younger males usually come in to play slot games. Pop and dance music are then played when young adults start to enter the place.

Aside from the music that a gambling establishment plays, you can also notice that casino games themselves use music. In this particular study, they focused on the importance of music in slot machine games. They found that the choice of music can describe the quality of the machine. The choice of music could also make a game more distinct and memorable.

It’s also important that slot machines have a distinct sound of winning. It’s already proven that music can affect a person’s mood and so if a player wins the game and they hear upbeat music, they get more excited and their self-esteem improves. This is why it could make a gambler want to play more even if they already won.

What’s also interesting is that many slot machine games don’t exactly play losing music or a sad tune that plays when the player loses. This is because it could discourage gamblers to play more. This is why successful slot machines would minimize music that signals losses.

Another study released in 2007 by Dixon, Trigg, and Griffins found that the tempo of music could also affect the gambling behavior of a person. This study implicated that music tempo influences the speed of betting but not really on how much people spend on this. They performed this study on 60 people while playing roulette.

The Norwegian Research Council also made a study concerning how the tempo of music can affect a person’s gambling behavior. They found that both high and low tempo music can lead to riskier gambling patterns. They found the same when it comes to the pace of betting. Fast-tempo music led to a faster betting pace but they also found that slow music also influenced the gambling behavior of the 101 participants that they had while playing a card game called SuperJack. Slow music made them place more bets which led to prolonged gambling behavior.

Now, not all gambling places make use of music for their gains. There are gambling sites that don’t use music at all like sportsbooks. This is because music could interfere with the broadcasting of sports events that are wagered on by their customers. Sports bettors are also typically strategical when it comes to the bets that they place and loud music might just affect their concentration levels.

Overall, the studies mentioned all proved that music does affect the gambling behavior of people. And so, the next time you visit a casino, online or not, take the time to listen to the music that they play and assess how it affects your mood. The next time you look for a game of slots, consider how music plays a role when it comes to your judgment of whether a slot machine game is of quality or not.