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
