I’ve always wondered whether the music and sound effects which accompany the action in video games can control (to some extent) the quality of the player’s performance. Or if they can even encourage return playing. Do game manufacturers hire social scientists and neuroscientists to research such things? From Meeri Kim’s Washington Post article about slot machine sounds:

“Whether you’re in Las Vegas or the small-town casino down the street, slot machines sound more or less the same: jangly music, the whir of spinning reels accompanied by loud beeps and chimes.

A recent shows that some of those noises can easily fool our brains into thinking that we have won — even when we have unequivocally lost money.

‘The way slot machines are designed, sound is a really crucial component of player feedback,’ said lead author and behavioral neuroscientist Michael J. Dixon of the University of Waterloo in Ontario.Because the jubilant sound effects are always tied to wins or even partial losses — ‘losses disguised as wins,’ Dixon calls them — they act as positive reinforcement and can skew our perception of lost money.” (Thanks Marginal Revolution.)