A history of constipation and what it might tell us about sports betting

In the late 19th century, Louis Pasteur’s work provided a major medical breakthrough. The acceptance of bacteriology and germ theory was revolutionising medicine. And it was simultaneously being used to give a scientific veneer to an intuition that was at least 2,000 years old: constipation was likely to murder you.

In the 1860s, Joseph Lister was first to apply the findings of Louis Pasteur to reducing surgical infection. He used carbolic acid to prevent sepsis. The same substance used to inhibit putrefaction in sewage. It wasn’t a gigantic intellectual leap to move from this notion to the idea that the intestines and attendant parts were basically a giant cess pool, sitting in the body, leaking toxic miasmas that were causing ailments from headaches to indigestion, impotence, nervousness, insomnia, to heart disease and cancer. Basically anything without (at the time) an obvious cause was blamed on constipation.

No good scientific idea goes unpunished. And Louis Pasteur’s breakthrough findings gave rise to what came to be known as intestinal autointoxication theory. By the 1920s and 1930s, a golden age of purgation was dawning. Literally hundreds of brands of luridly advertised ‘bowel cleansers’ competed to scare customers into emptying their wallets, in the hope of emptying their bowels.

‘Evidence’ for intestinal autointoxication was apparently staring surgeons right in the face. The appendix. It hung around next to the large intestine, no doubt soaking up all kinds of toxins. It got inflamed and made people sick. Once it got to this state, it often had to be whipped out. But now, Pasteur’s findings had made surgery much safer. Why not just remove the appendix before it got infected, just to be safe? After all, it didn’t do anything. Chop out the large intestine too, just to be sure. What’s the worst that could happen?

Removing stuff before we understand what it does?

In 1929, the writer and humourist GK Chesterton published The Thing: Why I am a Catholic. One of the rebuttals he offers atheists is now known as Chesterton’s fence. Summarised, it states that you shouldn’t remove something until you’re sure you know exactly what it does.

Whether that’s religion, a fence, or an internal organ that’s persisted through a million years plus of evolutionary change. It seems obvious when put like this. But are we guilty of removing Chesterton’s fences with our web apps? Or might some of our web apps be inadvertently removing fences we’ve yet to consider?

Over the last few years I’ve interviewed quite a few individuals about their use of web app sports books. A number of individuals fit into a group I call ‘migrators’. These were people who considered themselves to be fans of sport, with expert-level knowledge, who had used sports book apps, but stopped while continuing to gamble casually in other ways. This gambling might involve in-venue gambling machines, or casino apps. Curiously, quite a few ‘migrators’ said that despite having expert knowledge of sport, they felt the opportunity to win money gambling was higher in casino apps than sports books.

Why?

One individual who stood out was ‘Tim’, who was 37 years old when I first interviewed him. Tim put an accumulator on sports events on average once a week. He estimated he won about one in 10 times, and this was enough to more or less break even. He considered gambling in this way to be a fun ritual that amplified his enjoyment of sport. Yet Tim was a migrator. He’d tried sports book apps but stated he would never use them again. Instead he preferred to go into a high-street bookmaker and receive a physical betting slip. His stated reason for forgoing sports book apps was to avoid the temptation (on weekends when his accumulator died early in the day) to chase losses by putting on more bets once he’d had a few drinks.

Speaking to migrators led to two hypotheses.

1. Some users don’t want us to make it too easy for them to place bets. It is the case that the skill of our designers (high) by virtue of doing things that skilled designers do (removing friction and streamlining goal attainment, in this case placing a bet in an app) are reducing the number of customers using our apps.
2. Using sports book apps demands a steep learning curve to acquire new skills that are unrelated to sports fans’ expertise. While this expertise is likely the reason they decided to bet on sports in the first place, it is often unrewarded. Eg. a sports fan who wins a bet on Arsenal and Manchester City to both win at home, but who doesn’t understand odds very well may find that he has risked $10 for a meagre reward. This ‘win’ might make the user more averse to placing future bets than if the same user – with greater knowledge of odds – had placed a 10 match accumulator and lost, despite picking 9 out of 10 results correctly. The proximity to what would have been a big win likely makes the losing user feel smart. Risking a relatively large sum for a meagre payout, as in the case of the winning user, might actually make the user feel ‘dumb’, despite the win.

Premium friction

The IKEA effect, a concept popularised by behavioural economist Dan Ariely, refers to the cognitive bias where individuals place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created or assembled themselves, compared to products made entirely by others. This phenomenon is named after the Swedish furniture company IKEA.

Ariely’s research suggests that the act of assembling a product increases the emotional investment and perceived value of the item to the assembler. The effect is driven by the sense of accomplishment and competence that comes from completing the task, as well as the effort invested in the creation process. Essentially, the more effort one puts into creating something, the more one values it, even if the end result is not objectively superior to a pre-assembled item.

The IKEA effect underscores the importance of effort and personal investment in enhancing product attachment and perceived value. It affects us because we have a psychological need to feel competent. Here’s Dan Ariely talking about our motivation to work more generally. The Betty Crocker effect describes the same phenomenon.

Make me feel good by letting me feel competent

There are some categories where the customers’ feeling of competence is important to the experience. It’s important where the brand represents self-identity (1950s housewives and cooking in the case of the Betty Crocker effect, 1980s men and DIY with the IKEA effect).

Sports fans are in this category. I’ve never met a self-professed sports fan who doesn’t feel that they are at least above-average in terms of sports knowledge. But the experience of going from being a knowledgeable sports fan to being a noob bettor can be off-putting.

‘I am more likely to take a risk on investing if I can use my expertise.’

Sports fans may well be more inclined to gamble if they feel their expertise is rewarded. This process is sometimes referred to as Premium Friction. Here’s what it involves:

• Slow the process slightly, let me see my expertise contribute.
• Let me see the big picture.
• Give me stats and data to support my decisions in ways that make sense to me, in light of my existing knowledge.

Do you think that slowing down the process of placing a bet, and letting new users feel expert in their sports knowledge while we onboard them to the tricky business of sports betting, might make our sports book apps more popular? After all, unlike those early 20th century appendices, we’re always capable of putting a few things back.