Casino Designers Influence Human Senses

Casino designers introduce environmental characteristics to influence human senses. From the architecture to nearly everything else in a casino has a systematic function of keeping visitors inside spending money. Many things play a role into the players psyche to make them comfortable and entertained. Therefore, casinos play a psychological role in keeping people inside. One of the ways is by not having any clocks in casinos. By not having any clocks present the casinos goal is to keep the players so occupied in a slot machine or table game that they loose time and are fully engage and concentrated in the games. Another tactic that goes hand in hand with not having clocks is that most casinos don't have windows. Few may be seen at the entrance
That being the case casinos will do their best to keep the outside world nonexistent to the players inside the casino. A casino contains a dissonance of alluring stimulation to the brain that appeal to the senses. Such as hearing and sight. Bells ringing, flashing lights, noisy slot machines buzzing, change clanging all of this overloads our brain with stimulation to our senses by giving the impression of an exciting and fun environment. Light and color are two features that influence human senses with gambling not being an exception. Color can evoke different states of feeling and emotions. Some colors are associated with certain moods such as red being bold, stimulating, and exciting. And blue is calming, secure and comfortable. This is why many of the slot machines in casinos contain the colors red and blue in bright light to grab peoples attention by stimulating excitement through colors and light. Furthermore, near wins are also used on the players
According to research done pathological gambling involves altered activity in different brain areas or biochemical dysfunctions mainly involving the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and opiod systems. (“) Although we will only focus on dopamine which is a neurotransmitter which is responsible for transmitting signals between neuron or nerve cells of the brain. Dopamine is also a chemical correlated with emotional responses, pleasurable experiences and addictive behaviors. For example, dopamine levels may rise when we receive a hug from a loved one or eat that delicious piece of chocolate cake. Alterations and imbalances in dopamine levels is essential in the seeking of rewards, which include gambling. It is commonly believed that monetary gain is the cause of gambling behavior in humans. Mesolimbic dopamine (DA), the chief neuromediator of incentive motivation, is indeed released to a larger extent in pathological gamblers (PG) than in healthy controls (HC) during gambling episodes, (“) Other biological factors in the brain also affect why certain people gamble but there is one chemical in the body that plays a bigger role than any of the others and that is dopamine. Naturally when dopamine levels rise inside of us we want to experience the same feelings again and again. (“) Because of this people chase the sopamine high through things such as gambling by looking for the thrill that