It’s the ultimate human paradox: our brains crave order, control, and predictability, but we also get a kick out of the unknown. Randomness is an essential part of everyday entertainment. Not knowing the outcome is what makes us want to watch sports, play games, and indulge in our favourite series. But it’s also something our apparently highly evolved brain can find difficult to handle.
Our Brains Are Built to Find Patterns
The human brain is hardwired to recognise patterns, but this isn’t some quirky appendix. Being able to connect seemingly random events is what kept our ancestors alive. The caveman who assumed a rustle in the bushes was a predator rather than just the wind had an infinitely higher survival rate. We evolved this predisposition for finding meaning through over-association to keep us alive.
Psychology has a term for it: apophenia, defined as the tendency to see patterns and meaning in random information. The term was first coined in 1958 by German neurologist Klaus Conrad, though back then it was used to describe the early stages of schizophrenia. Today, it’s regarded as a universal cognitive bias rather than an immediate sign of mental illness.
It’s the psychological explanation for why we see faces in toast and animals in clouds, a specific sub-type of apophenia called pareidolia, in which our visual cortex tries to add familiarity to randomness.
Thanks to our current position atop the food chain, there’s rarely a survival related use for apophenia these days, but our brain’s old programming still flags three red cars in a row as a pattern, even though it’s just a coincidence.
Why Uncertainty Can Be Exciting
Interestingly, the brain perceives randomness in more than one way. While we’re driven to find meaning in chaos, that uncertainty can also be exciting. This raises another well-known psychological principle, that the anticipation of a reward can often trigger a greater release of dopamine (the feel-good hormone) than the actual reward itself. It’s in our biological nature to be thrilled by uncertainty.
We see this in our daily lives, especially when it comes to entertainment. We’re less inclined to want to watch a film if we know how it ends. Similarly, much of the excitement of watching a football or rugby match is dampened when we already know the final score. The same applies to quiz shows, mystery stories, and the roll of the dice in a board game.
And this effect isn’t restricted to offline activities. The same mechanism drives us to keep playing sweet-matching mobile games, lootbox-laden RPGs, and mobile casino games like roulette and blackjack on PlayOJO. It’s the suspense of not knowing the outcome that keeps us engaged.
Why We Think We Can Predict Random Events
Our cognitive biases see random events as a challenge or puzzle that must be solved, that has a logical explanation and can be controlled. The most common cognitive bias is called the Gambler’s Fallacy. Take a series of coin tosses, for example. If you land heads five times in a row, the Gambler’s Fallacy will have you believe that tails is ‘due’. The assumption is that there’s a sort of universal balance to these outcomes, rather than the simple fact that every coin toss is completely independent of the previous and the next. Each one is a 50/50 split, with no memory to influence the outcome.
The Gambler’s Fallacy is so powerful, it’s why roulette games often include a history of so-called ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ numbers, with players using this data to inform their number choices, despite the flawed logic.
Another common example of our need to control or predict randomness is the so-called ‘hot hand’ fallacy. It suggests that someone’s repeated success at a task assures their next attempt. Coined by Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky after a 1985 study of NBA basketball players’ shooting records, the hot hand fallacy proved that streaks were just random, although a later study suggested a success boost of a few percentage points).
Of course, when it comes to true randomness, no amount of cognitive bias can make these outcomes any more predictable or beatable.
Randomness in Games and Entertainment
Randomness is an essential component of games if replayability is the goal. The best example of this is how reluctant we become to play noughts and crosses once we spot the patterns that lead to a win or a tie. In the gaming sphere, predictability equals boredom. Throw in a bit of random action, such as dice rolls, card shuffles, or even procedurally generated levels as in Minecraft and no two sessions will ever be identical, making for much more unpredictable, and therefore engaging, gameplay.
Because unpredictability prevents repetition, randomness is also fundamental to many digital games, including online slots, where individual game outcomes are generated independently.
Can Computers Really Be Random?
The problem with machines like computers is that they’re logical; they’re basically designed to do what they’re told. That makes it difficult for them to handle something as complex and chaotic as randomness. Difficult, but not impossible.
Pseudorandom Number Generators (PRNGs) are about as close as you can digitally get to true randomness. PRNGs use a starting point called a ‘seed’, such as a millisecond on the clock, and feed it through a formula to produce a complex and unpredictable sequence. To all intents and purposes, the output is functionally random, sufficiently so for ensuring fairness in digital games.
Why Randomness Keeps Us Interested
Randomness presents us with a fascinating conundrum. Our brains naturally want to create order out of chaos, but in doing so, we eliminate the very mechanism that injects excitement into our favourite forms of entertainment. It’s what makes games replayable, creates variety, and adds suspense. Whether it’s a gripping thriller series, a tense multiplayer video game, or a few hands of online blackjack, unpredictability is the x-factor we’d love to hate. It’s the essential component that keeps us coming back for more. And yet we still insist on applying those ancient hardwired survival mechanisms in order to bring it under control. The key, of course, is balance; being able to discern between three red cars in a row not being a threat to life, while still allowing space for the anticipation of what the next one might be.
