Subject: MtG and Psychology: A Brief Note Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 11:05:59 -0400 From: Rochelle Webster To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Alice Coggins wrote up some interesting thoughts about the psychology of Magic. > The question is *why*. Why do I go back to Magic, over and over, >despite the fact that I regularly get frustrated and annoyed and upset >by it? What keeps players from quitting every time they fail to draw a >mountain for six turns and miss their chance to go to the Pro Tour? I'd like to add one answer to hers. Variable Reinforcement. Back in Psych 141 I learned about those rat-pushing-a-lever-for-food experiments. If they get one pellet for each push they get bored after a while & quit pushing so much. BUT, if they are given a random number of pellets they keep pushing. Same with monkeys. Same with humans. Humans push levers? Sure, they're called slot machines & they pay back say 97%. Would people feed a dollar into a slot machine over & over if the machine always spit back 97 cents? No way. But set it so that it usually gives back nothing, sometimes $1, less often 5$, and so on to extremely rarely $1000 and you've got an extremely profitable business. People will push that lever for hours on end. People get a lot of variable reinforcement out of Magic. Sometimes you open a pack and get a Cursed Scroll, sometimes it's a Sword of the Chosen. Sometimes you get matched all day against the deck you wreck, sometimes it's against the deck that wrecks you. Sometimes you topdeck the Demonic Consult, Consult for your 1 Kaervek's Spite for the win & get it. Sometimes you draw 10 swamps in a row (by the way, it's the nature of probability to run in streaks like that). We love the victories, even when they're rare & random, especially *because* they're rare & random. This is how rare the victories are: only one person wins a tournament (with exceptions). Opalka is on The Dojo today complaining about losing to chumlies. Once Opalka was a chumly himself who beat someone with skills. What an addictive thrill that must have been. If you don't like the randomness, play chess. But I bet you do like it. How many of us can beat Kasparov at chess? But every once in a while we do pull out a win against our local Magic god (be that Timmy who owns the Shivan or Finkel). Rochelle Webster Magic player, Magic judge, mom, nurse wannabe expert on everything :)