Cash back offers and Skinner's Rats

If you, like me, my blogging friends, use the Internet, watch television, read the papers or listen to radio, you will have noticed in the past 5 years or so a massive increase in the amount of advertising for sports betting.

You know the ones; funny ads, relatable schmucks, hot chicks who just loooove a man who bets.

Current Sportsbet advertisement feat. relatable bloke. 

No longer do you have to walk into your local TAB (or interstate equivalent), but you can now bet anywhere, any time (as the advertisements tell me) by using your mobile! Now, mobiles are perfect for bringing things into our lives that we otherwise would have needed to leave the house for; shopping (personally - yes!), watching a new movie, schoolyard bullying, and now of course, spending your hard earned on an event you are not even witnessing. 

The thing that has really riled me up though is the concept of cash back. I know it exists because it is all but rammed down my throat on a daily basis by listening to radio or turning on the television. There's a couple of reasons this pisses me off. Firstly is the wording, cash back. The way the advertisements paint it, it's almost like you go home with more money in your pocket than you started with. 

Take this ad, the final picture shows a man with money raining down on him, and jumping in joy. Uh, mate, that was your money to begin with. You may as well have just opened your wallet, thrown your cash on the ground, and then picked it up again! Cash back indeed! 

And this is the other reason.

Negative reinforcement.

What is negative reinforcement? Well, let's have a sneaky Google here. 

"Negative reinforcement occurs when the rate of a behaviour increases because an aversive event or stimulus is removed or prevented from happening".

This was made famous in the Skinner's Rat experiments you may have learned about in Psychology classes at High School. 

Growing up this day and age, many people would understand - at the very least - that actions such as smoking or gambling can end up with negative consequences; for gambling, this is losing your money. But now, with offers such as cash back, this previously unpleasant stimulus (losing your money) is taken away, so you can bet to your little hearts content.

Let's put this into a food context. I love me some Cheese and Bacon Balls. I just love them. But I don't buy them and I only eat them if someone already has them or given them to me, because they probably aren't a real food and they are terrible for you. But I do love them (note to people that give them to me: please do not stop). If someone was to say to me "Sarah, we've changed the recipe, they taste the same but these no longer have any negative impacts on your health" then my god I would eat a pack a day minimum. And happy I would be. 

BUT. 

What if they changed the recipe again? What if only some of the packets I was eating every day had this promise of good health?

What if not all betting attracted the same cash back offer as they did the ten weeks before it? 

Well, by this time, I'm probably hooked. I've been doing this action over and over again for weeks or months now and it was all good then - so you know what - I may as well keep doing it, because hell, I was really enjoying it.

I mean, it's so, so clever, but the simple fact is, gambling can damage lives. Some stats: In 2011, Australia spent 1.1 BILLION DOLLARS on online betting. It can lead to suicide, depression, relationship breakdown, lowered work productivity, job loss, bankruptcy and crime. 

I think these are facts that are hard to ignore, and make the fact that betting agencies spend so much money trying to get people hooked on betting absolutely deplorable and reminiscent of the advertising of cigarettes in the 1950's.

So what do we do? Knowing that is a marketing ploy to get you hooked is the start. Seeking help if you need it is another. But I think that there needs to be a change in policy to remove or reduce sports betting advertising from the media, including mid-broadcast by televised sport. Betting will always exist - just look at that historical documentary Game of Thrones; fighting pits and the betting that surrounds them are a part of life. 

Things were going so well until those damn harpies showed up. 

You're never going to be able to remove betting all together. But you can make it less appealing, and you can certainly stop advertising, as has been done, pretty successfully with cigarettes.

What do you think bloggers?