Gambling For Science

I was part of a psychiatric study today investigating how people make risky financial decisions. Said decisions were delivered by means of several minimal computer games. My favorite one was an expanding balloon of money: on the screen was a balloon and a pump, and clicking the pump inflated the balloon. The bigger the balloon got, the more money (real-life money, too) the subject got. However, at any point in this expansion process, there was a chance that the balloon would pop, and the subject would get nothing. It was edge-of-the-seat gameplay, to say the least.