The Effect of Skeuomorphic Digital Interfaces on the Illusion of Control over Gambling Outcomes

The current research focuses on how the use of "skeuomorphs" in digital design interacts with an illusion of control to influence gambling behavior. Skeuomorphism is a design concept in which an aspect of a modern item is made to represent its outdated counterpart, even if this representation serves no functional purpose, such as hands "dealing" cards or horses "racing" on the screen of a digital machine. It is proposed that the inclusion of these non-essential links to physical objects in digital gambling games interacts with a player's illusion of control over the outcome to influence behavior. Shown across a pretest and three experiments, the inclusion of skeuomorphic elements in the design of gambling games, compared to a minimalistic "flat" design, increases amount gambled. Additionally, skeuomorphism and manipulated illusion of control interact to further increase the amount gambled. The manuscript concludes with a discussion on the practical, theoretical, and policy implications of this research.