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Occasional rewards make habits stick
Two slot machines
One machine inexplicably pays off on every pull. The other, a more usual machine, pays on an unpredictable, intermittent schedule. The gambler who was rewarded on every pull notices the change quickly, while the one who won only occasionally may keep playing unrewarded for a long time.
Resistance to extinction
That staying power is called resistance to extinction: the behavior continues after the reward is removed. It is one of three reasons intermittent reinforcement is argued to be the most efficient way to maintain a behavior that has already been learned.
Why casinos use it
Casinos run on it. They want people to gamble, but they can't afford to have people win large amounts very often. Making the rewards unpredictable triggers excitement and raises the response without raising the amount of reinforcement.
Why do occasional rewards outlast constant ones?
Researchers call this the partial reinforcement extinction effect. Psychologist Lloyd Humphreys reported it in 1939, in experiments on conditioned eyelid responses in people, finding that the responses faded more slowly after partial reinforcement than after rewards on every trial. One explanation is discrimination: when rewards came every time, their absence is easy to notice, while a dry stretch after occasional rewards looks like the ones already survived. Later experiments with rats and pigeons found the same pattern.
Why do near-misses keep gamblers playing?
A near-miss, such as two matching symbols with a third just off the line, is a loss, yet it feels close to winning. In a 2009 brain imaging study published in the journal Neuron, Luke Clark and colleagues found that near-misses activated reward-related brain regions, including the striatum, even though no money was won.
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