[A] Cognitive approach to gambling

Question 1

[INITIATION] What may an individual use gambling to cope with?

Answer 1

Psychological issues such as depression.

Question 2

[INITIATION] How can gambling help to deal with stressful life events?

Answer 2

By distracting the individual from daily stressors.

Question 3

[INITIATION] What is another reason people start to gamble?

Answer 3

Expectancy, people expect to win the rollover on the Euromillions, which influences them to start gambling.

Question 4

[INITIATION] What did Li find?

Answer 4

Recreational gamblers gamble for pure pleasure whereas pathological gamblers tended to gamble to escape the painful reality of their lives.

Question 5

[MAINTENANCE] What do dysfunctional ideas become?

Answer 5

Self-fulfilling, so the individual continues to gamble.

Question 6

[MAINTENANCE] How does expectancy play a role in maintenance?

Answer 6

Hearing about people who win the lottery convinces the gambler to keep gambling.

Question 7

[MAINTENANCE] What do problem gamblers have?

Answer 7

Irrational beliefs and perceptions about their ability to influence the outcome of their gambling.

Question 8

[MAINTENANCE] What did Griffiths find?

Answer 8

Pathological gamblers showed a cognitive bias when gambling, believing they were more skilful than they were, they were more likely to make irrational verbalisations and more likely to personify the machine.

Question 9

[MAINTENANCE] What is the gambler’s fallacy?

Answer 9

A belief that completely random events are somehow influenced by recent events.

Question 10

[MAINTENANCE] What do gamblers show?

Answer 10

Exaggerated self-confidence that they can beat the system and they develop false attributions suggesting that the outcome is down to their skill rather than chance.

Question 11

[MAINTENANCE] What is a problem with Griffiths’ study?

Answer 11

It is based on what he decides to be irrational verbalisations, so is not reliable as a different researcher may consider irrationality differently.

Question 12

[RELAPSE] What do gamblers do?

Answer 12

Overestimate their wins and underestimate their losses.

Question 13

[RELAPSE] What does a string of losses make a gambler believe?

Answer 13

They are going to be ‘rewarded later for their efforts’.

Question 14

[RELAPSE] How are gamblers motivated to return to gambling?

Answer 14

By being convinced that they deserve to win, the just-world bias.

Question 15

[RELAPSE] What is an advantage of the cognitive approach to explaining gambling?

Answer 15

It takes an active approach to explaining addiction, rather than simply blaming biological causes.