Addiction: Explanations for Gambling addiction - Cognitive Theory Flashcards
What is cognitive bias?
Where a person’s thinking, memory and attentional processes are faulty, leads to them making irrational decisions and poor decisions.
What do these biases infleunce?
How gamblers think about their behaviour , what they pay attention to and what they remember and what they forget
Who classified cognitive biases into 4 categories?
Rickwood et al
What are the 4 types of cognitive biases?
Faulty beliefs of skills and judgement
Engaging in personal traits/ ritualistic behaviours
Selective recall
Faulty perceptions
What is faulty beliefs of skills and judgements?
Gambling addicts have an illusion of control, they overestimate their ability to influence a random event
What is engaging in personal traits/ ritualistic behaviours?
Addicted gambers blieve they have a greater probability of winning over other people because they are lucky or have engagesd in superstitious behaviour
What is selective recall?
Addicted gamblers remember certain types of info/memories/events better than other
What is faulty perceptions?
Addicted gamblers have distorted views about the operation of chnace (gamblers fallacy)
What is self-efficacy?
Refers to an individual’s perceived ability to control their own behaviour
What can self-efficacy help explain?
Why some people relapse into gambling again after abstaining
What will addicts with low self efficacy believe?
They can’t give up gambling and it will always be a part of them, leads to self-fulfilling prophecy
Who researched gambling?
Griffiths
What did Griffiths do?
Carried out a natural experiment on a sample of 30 regular gamblers
Who did griffiths compare the regular gamblers do?
A control group of occasional gamblers
What did the gamblers do?
Played on a fruit machine, asked to think aloud and verbalise their thought processes whilst playing, interviewed afterwards
What did Griffiths find?
Regular gamblers saw themselves as ‘skilful’ at the fruit machine, made more irrational statements compared to occasional gamblers.
More likely to explain their losses as ‘near wins’
Link for Griffiths
Demonstrates the faulty thought processes and control that gamblers believe they have over random events
What is a counter arguement for Griffiths?
Use of ‘thinking aloud’ has been questioned
CA Griffiths - What do some psychologists believe?
What people say in gambling situations doesn’t necessarily represent what they really think
CA Griffiths - What remarks are made?
‘Off the cuff’ remarks made whilst gambling may not reflect an addicts deeply-held beliefs about chance and skill
CA Griffiths - What will researchers get from ‘off the cuff’ remarks?
Misleading impression that gamblers’ though processes are irrational when infact they’re not
CA Griffiths link
Limits validity
One strength of the cognitive theory as an explanation of gambling addiction
Practical applications
What do the principles of the theory suggest?
Addiction is caused by cognitive biases and faulty thought processes
