Explanations For Gambling Addiction - cognitive theory Flashcards
What are cognitive biases?
Irrational beliefs that are unhelpful, illogical and inconsistent with our social reality, and which can lead us to behave in inappropriate ways.
What is the cognitive approach based on?
On the assumption that irrational beliefs and distorted thinking patterns contribute to the development and maintenance of problem gambling (cognitive biases)
What do cognitive biases include?
The gamblers fallacy
Illusions of control
The ‘near miss’ bias
The recall bias
What is gamblers fallacy?
The belief that completely random events such as a coin toss are somehow influenced by recent events
E.g. a gambler might believe that runs of a particular outcome will be balanced out by the opposite outcome
What are illusions of control?
Pathological gamblers may also show an exaggerated self-confidence in their ability to ‘beat the system’ and influence chance.
Success is attributed to their personal ability or skill, and failure attributed to bad luck.
What is the near miss bias?
Near misses occur when an unsuccessful outcome is close to a win.
As a consequence of these, the gambler may feel that he is ‘not constantly losing but constantly nearly winning’ (Griffiths, 1991).
What is the recall bias?
Pathological gamblers have a tendency to remember and overestimate wins while forgetting about and underestimating losses (Blanco, 2000).
Consequently, a string of losses does not act as a disincentive for future gambling.
What is the key study?
Cognitive bias in fruit machine gambling - Griffiths, 1994
What was the procedure of the study?
Compared 30 regular gamblers (who played fruit machines more than once a week), with 30 non-regular gamblers, who played less than once a month.
Each individual was given £3 to spend playing a fruit machine in the arcade.
Griffiths was interested in the gamblers verbalisations as they played the machine, assuming that this would give some insight into the particular cognitive biases that were operating at the time
What were the findings of the study?
Regular gamblers believed they were more skilful than they actually were.
They were more likely to make irrational statements during play such as ‘Putting only a quid in bluffs the machine’, an example of the ‘illusion of control’ bias.
Interviews with the participants revealed that whereas the majority of the non-regular gamblers believed played the game was ‘mostly chance’, most of the regular gamblers believed success was either due to skill or equally chance and skill.
Regular gamblers explained away their losses by seeing ‘near misses’ as ‘near wins’, something that justified their continuation.
1/3 of the regular gamblers continued playing until they had lost all their money, whereas only 2 of the non-regular gamblers did so.
What are the evaluative points?
Research support for the role of cognitive bias
Implications for treatment
Irrational thinking varies with type of gambling
Awareness does not decrease susceptibility to cognitive bias
