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Can We Perceive Near Miss? An Empirical Study

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Abstract

Near misses are a special kind of reinforcement which increases one’s desire to play. The aim of this paper is to examine the perception of near misses in normal population. We used a slot machine simulation running on a PC, where participants had to play four rounds with different near miss ratios (0, 15, 30 and 45%). Our sample consisted of 159 individuals with mean age of 22.8 and with no or little gambling experience. For data analysis we used chi-squared goodness-of-fit test and exact binomial test. Despite the fact, that there was a notable effect of near misses results showed that the subjects could not perceive trials of them.

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Correspondence to Győző Kurucz.

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Kurucz, G., Körmendi, A. Can We Perceive Near Miss? An Empirical Study. J Gambl Stud 28, 105–111 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-011-9240-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-011-9240-6

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