Note 16 — Chapter XXVI · Reconstructing the Crime
Reading edition
Recently I ran across an article by Doctor George A. Dorsey, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, and author of “Why We Behave Like Human Beings,” which bore intimate testimony to the scientific accuracy of Vance’s theory. In it Doctor Dorsey said: “Poker is a cross-section of life. The way a man behaves in a poker game is the way he behaves in life. . . . His success or failure lies in the way his physical organism responds to the stimuli supplied by the game. . . . I have studied humanity all my life from the anthropologic and psychological view-point. And I have yet to find a better laboratory exercise than to observe the manners of men as they see my raise and come back at me. . . . The psychologist’s verbalized, visceral, and manual behaviors are functioning at their highest in a poker game. . . . I can truthfully say that I learned about men from poker.” ↩︎