Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here with a classic
Speaker 1: episode from our archives. Superstition is a fascinating phenomenon, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that humans aren't the only animals that
Speaker 1: have them. I'll let former Lauren explain, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel bomb here. Imagine your hours into a late
Speaker 1: night poker match. Hold up in the basement of a
Speaker 1: sketchy watering hole where tensions are rising. You know you
Speaker 1: should quit while you're ahead, but you just can't bring
Speaker 1: yourself to leave any possible winnings on the table. The
Speaker 1: streak has gone on so long it's like you can't lose,
Speaker 1: except you do. One bad card deals you a killer blow.
Speaker 1: The spell is broken and your hot hand is gone. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it never existed in the first place. Researchers have taken
Speaker 1: great pains to prove that the hot hand bias is
Speaker 1: exactly that a bias. It's humans innate predisposition that makes
Speaker 1: us believe we see patterns including winning or losing streaks
Speaker 1: where none exist, especially when preservation or gain are involved.
Speaker 1: Now we know that monkeys have the same superstitious bias too, oh,
Speaker 1: and they really love to gamble. It seems we species
Speaker 1: have more in common than just the of our DNA.
Speaker 1: During a study by researchers at Clarkston University and the
Speaker 1: University of Rochester, REESUS monkeys played a fast paced computer
Speaker 1: game with built in rewards. Correctly guess the next step
Speaker 1: in the pattern, get a treat. However, even when the
Speaker 1: sequence was random, the monkeys gambled like they were on
Speaker 1: a winning streak, showing a false belief in their run
Speaker 1: of good luck. Despite being given multiple opportunities to rehearse
Speaker 1: a different scenario, the monkeys stuck to the patterns they
Speaker 1: perceived to be winning ones. Gambling monkeys hell bent on
Speaker 1: a hot hand is one thing. Figuring out why they
Speaker 1: share our pension for these patterns is another. A researchers
Speaker 1: point to the odds of finding food in a monkey's
Speaker 1: natural habitat. If a monkey finds a plump beetle under
Speaker 1: tree bark once, it's a clue that he should check
Speaker 1: nearby trees too. If he finds another beetle nearby, it
Speaker 1: reinforces a pattern that the monkey will probably repeat the
Speaker 1: next time he's hungry, even though he may never find
Speaker 1: another beetle the next twenty times he looks. It seems
Speaker 1: neither monkeys nor humans ever really make decisions that are
Speaker 1: free from bias, and we don't even recognize that we're
Speaker 1: doing it. Take the process by which some humans decide
Speaker 1: to invest in a particular stock. A stock that rises
Speaker 1: one day is never guaranteed to rise the next, or
Speaker 1: ever again. Yet we believe that if a stock went
Speaker 1: up once, it will do it again, and so surely
Speaker 1: that will be the most logical investment. This belief in
Speaker 1: winning and losing streaks may not be solely a product
Speaker 1: of life experiences, as was previously thought, Because we share
Speaker 1: the superstition with monkeys. Scientists think there may be a
Speaker 1: genetic component to it and hope that further research could
Speaker 1: lead to new approaches to treating gambling addiction, insight into
Speaker 1: decision making theory, and more. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Laurie L. Dove and produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Bang.
Speaker 1: For more on this lons of other curious topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts of my heart Radio,
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.