Research Portfolio | Science, Technology, & Society
Understanding gambling addiction
Odds are that you imagine gamblers as people simply trying to get lucky and win a big payoff. But when Natasha Schull, Associate Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, began researching the lives of gamblers in Las Vegas, she found a very different motivation at work.
Story at MIT News
Schull discusses her research on 60 Minutes
Natasha Dow Schüll
Addiction by Design: Gambling in Las Vegas
Princeton University Press, 2012
Drawing on 15 years of field research, anthropologist Schüll shows how electronic gambling games are now designed to pull players into a trancelike state called the "machine zone"—a state in which gambling addicts will play not to win, but simply to keep playing, even to physical and financial exhaustion.
