Fundamentally, rock-paper-scissors is a game of pure chance. If you forget about the psychology of the game, the best tactic would be choose to rock, paper, or scissors randomly, but equally often. But psychology does enter into the game, and a new study published in Scientific Reports reveals how human emotion can lead you to defeat.
The researchers, from University of Sussex in the UK and Ryerson University in Canada, had people play a computerized opponent which took a purely random approach to the game. But the team found that players didn’t take a random approach at all. They found that human players seems to fall into a trap where they continue to play using the same item if they win, but switch if they draw or lose. It seems that people ‘downgrade’ their item (i.e. they switch from, say, Rock to Scissors) if they lose but ‘upgrade’ (from Rock to Paper) if they draw.
via Gizmodo
