Hello All:
It has been a busy week in AP research. We turned in our Annotated Bibliographies, so now we are shifting our focus to the literature review. Specifically this week, the blog posts will focus on our research question, so here is mine.
How do the effects of priming, time pressure, and near-misses compare in their ability to influence isolated individuals' behavior while playing blackjack?
Here is the justification for every part of my research question.
First things first (I'm the realest), I have to address any definitions I will need to provide, and there are quite a few in here. In my literature review, I will define priming, time pressure, and near-miss effects. Here are the definitions for all those terms.
Priming: Priming effects occur when people subconsciously perceive information through various stimuli and then base their actions on the information without even knowing they are doing it.
This definition is taken from a combination of Radel et al. and Bahrami et al., whose credibility I justify in my annotated bib.
Time Pressure: Time pressure effects occur when people are forced to make a decision within a short amount of time.
This definition is taken from a combination of Dhar and Nowlis and Young et al., whose credibility is also established in the annotated bib.
Near-Miss: Near miss effects occur when players think they were close to winning (e.g. they were one number off or had 2/3 of the correct symbols on a slot machine) and/or getting good at a purely chance game even though they were just as far from winning as if they had been 10 numbers off (because the odds are all the same).
This definition is taken from a combination of Luke Clark and Mark Dixon, whose credibility is also justified in my annotated bib.
Now that I have defined my terms, I will move onto discussing my scope. I narrowed my scope down to blackjack because it is the most manageable casino game for me to look at; all I need is a deck of cards and a room (and obviously participants) to look at blackjack. I feel that my scope is still manageable with all three effects because I just will need to come in three different days and do my experiments, which is not a big deal. I think that all three factors are important to look at since they all exist together and looking at two without the third is just ignoring an important piece of the puzzle. I also specifically say isolated because I am looking at them alone, rather than in groups, which is a whole separate area, since social behavior then kicks in.
The one major assumption I make is that the effects I bring up do affect gambling behavior. My literature review will prove that they do, so by the time I get to my question, it will be proven and not an assumption.
My independent variables are each of the effects and my dependent variable for all three experiments is the gambler's behavior. Building off that, I plan to put the subjects in the same situation during a blackjack game (so I will set up the deck how I want it and instruct the dealer how to deal) and change the condition of the subject depending on what I am testing that time. I will have 4 trials with a different of randomly selected participants to participate in each one. I will of course have a control group, who I vary nothing for. In my priming group, I plan to subliminally prime them a number (for example 6 if they were shown 15) and see whether their rate of hitting on 15 changes. For time pressure, I will give them five or ten seconds to decide and see how they react. For near-misses, I plan to have them play a few close games with the dealer and feel like they are getting good, and then see what they do when faced with the same situation as the other groups. My methods section will go into depth about my experimental design, but right now that is how I plan to investigate the question.
Finally, I think my research question fills a gap since currently these three effects are looked at in a vacuum and not compared to each other, so by putting the effects in conversation, I am filling the current gap in the research on them. Also, my research has real-world applications and significance, since the casino industry brings in billions of dollars each year and is growing (according to Kenneth Peak). So by looking at the ways people behave while gambling, I am helping to generalize gambling behaviors and helping to start the conversation about what influences people to gamble and how we can stop people from becoming gambling addicts and wasting their money away. Even though I am looking at individual behaviors, the gambling industry starts with each individual's behavior and betting, so my research therefore has a larger significance within the gambling industry.
Thanks for reading my post. Unfortunately there will be no memes today. (856)
Hey Max, I definitely think your research question is getting to what you really want to study, but I have a few questions and comments about your scope and methodology.
ReplyDeleteFirst (And I might be completely wrong here), but how are you going to isolate the primings that individuals may already have towards Blackjack. People could have be different types of risk takers, which could affect their choices in the first place, which could skew the data. For example, the control group could end up being people who are really risk averse and crowd out any correlation that you might expect or that might have been there. Maybe you could introduce a survey assess characteristics that are important within this study and ultimately group people based on the results of this test.
My comment on intrinsic biases also leads me to my second point: your choice of Blackjack. When you first introduced the topic a few weeks ago, and since then, you've always stressed that because people have biases it's really important to choose a topic that people don't have much opinions about in the first place. In respect to casino games, I feel like Blackjack is the one game that even card playing amateurs have played. This means that A LOT of people could have biases (or certain ways of playing Blackjack) before the study, making it really hard to eliminate or even mitigate this external factor. Maybe think about a more obscure card game, or invent your own? I don't really know, but Blackjack doesn't seem reasonable in determining any results.
Finally, my last critique of your research question is the way in which you are putting the three aspects of your research into conversation with one another. I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to standardize a measure for influence across, as what you describe, are three fairly different things. Doing so would probably require a model for considering all three hollistically, and I don't really know how plausible that is in the current time frame. If you decide to do things without a model, I think you run into a lot of the problems I discussed with earlier, such as bias. Subjectively measuring an influence is probably not the way to go.
Anyways, I guess in pertinence to your research question you need to clarify the link that you envision between time pressure, priming, and near-misses, most likely change the game from BlackJack or introduce an even more restricted situation, and reconsider what you mean by "isolated individual".
Akash
(393)
Deletehey max so i think your question is pretty good right now and seems like it’s going to be really interesting but i have a few critques.
ReplyDeleteso when i first read “isolated individuals” and even after i read your explanation about the scope i thought you meant like you were testing people alone in not in groups, but you actually meant you're testing each variable alone and not all together, so i think the phrase “isolated individuals” is weird. actually now I'm second guessing myself…i couldn't tell what the antecedent to “them” was when you later described what isolated meant…did you actually mean you're only looking at one person at a time….bc if so i think you need a better justification for looking at them all alone, bc people behave differently in groups than they do by themselves in a game. even if i totally misinterpreted your meaning of isolated individual, i think you need a better explanation of how looking at them individually would control for social behavior, and why that’s a good way to test this given that when people play blackjack they're usually with other people right ?
ok moral of the story be clear about the antecedent to your pronouns bc that was a wild ride and I'm pretty sure you were referring to the actual people now that i look back
ok ALSO how are you going to account for like how much people play? are you choosing people who barely know how to play or people who play all the time, bc if they do play all the time and are god (like if they know how to count card or whatever idek) and they have their own strategy (i know it’s a game of chance but kind of like what akash said about risk takers — they have their own way of playing the game) you changing the variables may not have any effect on them.
anywayyyyy ur question is cool and i think ur going to rock it
How do the effects of priming, time pressure, and near-misses compare in their ability to influence the betting patterns of adults while playing blackjack alone?
ReplyDeleteWe decided to choose adults because they are less prone to super risky decisions and their levels of risks are pretty standard. I am going to define adult as anybody over 30.
I also plan to look into some standardized risk assessment surveys that have been researched, so I can try and measure the risk averseness of my subjects
How do the effects of priming, time pressure, and near-misses compare in their ability to influence the betting patterns of adults facing an ambiguous hand while playing blackjack alone?
Deleteambiguous hand = cards add to 13-16, make sure to define in paper
I think my biggest critique of the question lies in the scope: I still think, even with "adults" as your population, you haven't narrowed the scope. All adults of all genders of all socioeconomic statuses of all ages? I think it's still a bit broad.
ReplyDelete