Gambling Motivation and Superstition in One Casino Survey

The Study, and Its Date

The study this page reports exists and can be read on its publisher’s own site. It is “Gambling motivations and superstitious beliefs: a cross-cultural study with casino customers”, by Jungsun (Sunny) Kim, Mikael B. Ahlgren, Jeoung-Woo Byun and Kristin Malek, in International Gambling Studies, volume 16, issue 2, pages 296 to 315. The publisher’s page records it as received 31 December 2015, accepted 19 April 2016 and published online 17 May 2016. It is a decade-old survey, and nothing below is presented as a current description of any gambling market.

The authors state their reason for doing it: “The expansion of legalized commercial gaming in Macau has motivated stakeholders to explore opportunities in other Asian countries.” “However, there is a lack of research focusing on casino customers in these markets.” and they state the question: “Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore gambling superstitious beliefs and motivations of those visiting a casino in South Korea, and how these factors are different across four ethnic groups.”

What It Measured

The method is the most important fact about this study, and the abstract gives it in one sentence: “The researchers surveyed 323 casino customers in the lounge area on the casino floor, including Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans living abroad.” That is a single venue, in one country, at one point in time, with answers given by people about their own beliefs. A survey of that design records what 323 people said in a casino lounge in the mid 2010s. It is not a measurement of a nationality, and it is not a fact about a continent.

The paper also states who it was written for, which belongs in any honest summary of it: “The findings of this study will help casino operators properly develop and adjust strategies to thrive in the Asian marketplace.” The recommendations at the end of such a paper are marketing advice addressed to operators. They are reported here as that, and not reproduced as guidance.

What It Reported

The findings below are quoted from the abstract, because the full text is behind a paywall. On superstition the authors state: “This study found American gamblers could be characterized as more superstitious than Japanese gamblers, while the Chinese and American gamblers exhibited many similarities regarding the pattern of superstitious beliefs that they were most likely to endorse.” On motivation: “The findings also suggest the culture and the area around the casino might be more important to Chinese, while novelty to Japanese and winning money to Korean gamblers are seen as most important.” On their own contribution: “This study contributes to gambling literature by examining gamblers’ beliefs and motives in a different setting with more diverse populations than those in previous studies.”

Two things in that are worth noticing. The strongest superstition finding is a comparison between American and Japanese respondents, with the Americans the more superstitious of the two — which is the opposite shape to the framing that superstition is an Asian characteristic. And the Chinese and American respondents came out similar to one another in the pattern of beliefs they endorsed. Everything else an earlier version of this article listed as a finding — the proportions of each group in the sample, a ranking of Japanese against Korean respondents, the most popular games, and the per-group advice to operators — is not in the abstract and could not be read, so it is not restated here.

Superstition Is a Belief, Not a Method

The research literature treats superstition as one of a family of cognitive distortions, and defines it precisely. A study of 25 older gamblers in Singapore, published in PLOS ONE, lists the three categories: the “gambler’s fallacy, i.e., not accepting the randomness of an event and harboring misperceptions that a future win or loss is related to past outcomes when, in fact, each gambling event is distinct” the “illusion of control whereby gamblers attempt to predict or control events that are inherently random thus they incorrectly attribute the result of winning a game to their own actions, which motivates them to develop their skills to increase their winnings” and “superstitions—beliefs that certain behaviors, rituals (e.g., wearing a certain coloured shirt or a lucky charm) or thoughts will influence the outcome of a gambling event” A belief that a ritual influences an outcome is a belief about an outcome, and that is all it is.

That study also carries the finding that bears most directly on this page’s subject. Its aim was “The study aims to describe the construct of cognitive distortions based on the narratives of older adult gamblers (aged 60 years and above) in Singapore.” Its sample was small — “In all, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with older adult gamblers.” — and its conclusion was that “Cognitive distortions were endorsed by all gamblers in the current study and were shown to play a role in both maintaining and escalating the gambling behaviour.” followed by the sentence that should govern any cross-cultural reading of superstition in gambling: “While the surface characteristics of the distortions had a culture-specific appearance, the deeper characteristics of the distortions may in fact be more universal than previously thought.” In other words the lucky colour, the avoided number and the chosen seat differ from place to place; the error underneath them does not.

A review in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B explains where the error comes from and what it costs. On its origin: “On the one hand, humans are generally poor at processing probability and judging randomness.” On the family of beliefs it produces: “Impaired processing of randomness may give rise to the ‘Gambler's Fallacy’, where the gambler believes that a win is ‘due’ after a series of losses.” and “which ultimately give rise to an ‘illusion of control’ where the gambler confuses a game of chance with a game of skill” On what a feeling of control is worth: “However, the random nature of gambling games means that the availability of personal control has no actual bearing on the likelihood of a win occurring.” And on the consequence: “The cognitive approach argues that gambling behaviour is maintained by erroneous beliefs and cognitive distortions about the true chances of winning, such that gamblers perceive the expected value of gambling as positive, when in fact, the objective expected value is negative.”

The Regulator’s Sentence

One sentence from a gambling regulator settles the factual question that every superstition in this subject turns on. The Gambling Commission’s consumer guidance on gaming machine payouts, dated “Last updated: 16 June 2021”, states: “The odds of achieving a win in the current game remain constant and are not affected by wins or losses in previous games.” Ontario’s Registrar’s Standards for gaming require the same property of the product itself: “The probability of achieving a specific game outcome shall be constant and independent of game history, player or any other factor, unless clearly explained in the terms governing play.” and list, among the things game and promotional material must not do, to “Use language that suggests the probability of a particular outcome is more likely to occur than its actual probability.”

The arithmetic says it a third way. Pennsylvania’s table game regulations require that “A single zero Roulette wheel must have 37 equally spaced compartments around the wheel where the Roulette ball may come to rest.” and pay a single number at “Straight 35 to 1” One chance in 37 paid at 35 to 1 returns 36 units for 37 staked, and it does so on the first spin and the five hundredth. No seat, colour, number or ritual appears anywhere in that calculation, because there is nowhere in it for one to go.

What This Page Does Not Say

It does not attribute a trait to a nationality or an ethnic group. The study reports what 323 respondents at one venue said about themselves, and the PLOS ONE work above argues that the distortions beneath culturally specific beliefs may be shared rather than distinctive. It does not present any belief, ritual or preference as effective, because no source supports that and two regulators state the opposite. And it does not repeat the operator-facing recommendations the study ends with, because advice on how to appeal to a group’s beliefs about luck is not information a player needs.

Where to Get Help

The World Health Organization’s fact sheet on gambling, dated 2 December 2024, notes that one of the ways harmful products are promoted is by “exploiting gamblers' cognitive biases” and records that “Gambling harm also occurs well below clinical thresholds.” The NHS publishes screening questions on a page it dates “Page last reviewed: 8 December 2023”, including “Do you bet more than you can afford to lose?” and “Have you tried to win back money you have lost (chasing losses)?” and states that “If your total score is 8 or higher, you or those closest to you, are likely to be experiencing gambling-related harms.”

GambleAware publishes the National Gambling Helpline on its own site. For England and Scotland: “If you live in England and Scotland and are worried about gambling, you can contact GamCare's free confidential helpline by phone or online chat, 24 hours a day, every day of the year.” and “Call 0808 8020 133” For Wales: “If you live in Wales and need to speak to someone about how gambling is affecting you or someone you care about, you can call the free NHS Wales helpline.” and “Call 0808 2819 265”