Gambling behaviour - Cognitive theory

Question 1

Cognitive Theory of Gambling Addiction:
Key Assumptions

Answer 1

The Cognitive Approach focuses on how we process information and explains gambling behaviour in terms of cognitive distortions or maladaptive thought patterns i.e. faulty thinking and cognitive biases, which become habitual and therefore lead to the development and maintenance of the behaviour.

Cognitive explanations assume that all individuals are equally susceptible to developing addictions, unlike certain biological models e.g. genetic predisposition.

Cognitive explanations are thought to offer a better account of behavioural addictions, such as gambling.

Question 2

GAMBLING: FAULTY THINKING

Answer 2

According to this approach, gambling addiction is the result of faulty judgements, e.g. we will win or at least be able to control the odds, using our “lucky numbers” on the lottery - so lucky that you’ve never won anything with them!

Question 3

The Gambler’s Fallacy

Answer 3

Assuming previous events will influence future events, which are in fact entirely random e.g. coin toss – assuming that three heads in a row will be balanced out by the opposite outcome (same number of tails), when in fact the flips are independent.

Question 4

Illusions of Control

Answer 4

The individual believes that they can directly manipulate the outcome of the event through superstitious behaviours e.g. kissing dice before throwing. They might also show an exaggerated self-confidence in their ability to influence chance e.g. believing they can ‘beat the system’.

Question 5

The ‘Near Miss’ Bias

Answer 5

the gambler may think that they are constantly nearly winning, not constantly losing.

Question 6

Recall Bias (Availability Bias)

Answer 6

Remembering and overestimating wins; forgetting about/rationalising losses (losses won’t necessarily act as a disincentive for future gambling).

Question 7

Flexible Attributions

Answer 7

When the gambler explains wins as due to his/her skill and losses to other influences e.g. bad luck.

Question 8

‘Just World’ Hypothesis

Answer 8

Gamblers believe they ‘deserve’ to win having lost so often on previous occasions.

Question 9

Griffiths (1994): aim

Answer 9

To investigate cognitive biases involved in gambling behaviour

Question 10

Griffiths (1994): procedure

Answer 10

The study took place in an amusement arcade.
Griffiths 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) – this was the main independent variable.
Each individual was given £3 to spend playing a fruit machine (‘Fruitskill’) in the arcade. Each gamble was 10 pence (30 gambles).
They were given the objective of staying on the machine for 60 gambles and making back the £3, which would enable them to continue gambling if they wished to do so.
Griffiths recorded the gamblers’ verbalisations (what they said they were thinking) whilst they were playing – ‘thinking aloud’ method. This was the main dependent variable, although he also made objective measurements of skill (how skilled they actually were on the machine), as well as subjective measures of skill perception (how skilled they ‘thought’ they were) by conducting post-experimental interviews.

Question 11

Griffiths (1994): findings

Answer 11

Regular gamblers believed they were more skilled than they actually were.
Regular gamblers were more likely to make irrational statements during play. For example:
‘the machine hates me’
‘this fruity is in a good mood’
‘I had a feeling it was going to chew up those tokens fairly rapidly’
26 of the 30 regular gamblers believed success was either due to skill or equally chance and skill, whereas the majority of the non-regular gamblers believed the game was ‘mostly chance’ and none believed it involved any ‘skill’.
Regular gamblers also explained losses by seeing ‘near misses’ as ‘near wins’ to justify their continuation.
One-third of the regular gamblers continued playing until they had lost all their money, whereas only two of the non-regular gamblers did so.

Question 12

Griffiths conclusions

Answer 12

He concluded that gambling may be maintained through irrational beliefs, e.g. regular gamblers thought that they were more skilful than they were (exaggerated self-confidence) and that they could manipulate the fruit machine (illusions of control).
This is due to the faulty attributions gamblers make. They also had cognitive distortions about how close they came to winning and the nature of the machine they were using.

Question 13

Griffiths (1994): Evaluation of procedure

Answer 13

A major strength of this study was the amount and type of data collected:
The behavioural data such as fruit machine gambling was quantitative, allowing for comparisons and statistical analysis.
The qualitative data collected from the verbalisations were quantified using content analysis, again allowing statistical comparisons.
The transcripts and the post experimental semi-structured interview also provided qualitative data allowing the research greater insights into the heuristics used by the participants.
The ’thinking aloud’ method was a very useful way of assessing private thought processes as participants gambled. However, this technique may not have captured all of the thoughts of the participants, for example, some participants may have censured their thoughts, would not be able to put their thoughts into words and there were periods of time (up to 30 seconds) when the participants were silent.
High ecological validity: The study was carried out in an actual amusement arcade on a typical fruit machine.

Low inter-rater reliability of the coding system - Griffiths completed the coding of the verbalisations himself and had a second researcher code the same results, but the inter-rater reliability was low.
Demand characteristics: The participants were aware they were being studied and may have responded when verbalising their thoughts, playing the fruit machine or responding to the interview in ways they thought the experimenter wanted them to.
Social desirability bias, particularly with the regular gamblers – they may have been dishonest about their gambling activities to researchers.
Sample bias: As with all volunteer samples we can question whether the participants are representative. There was only one female in the regular gamblers condition, although young males are far more likely to be involved in regular fruit machine gambling than females.

Question 14

Research support for the role of cognitive biases in problem gambling

Answer 14

There is a large body of evidence (Griffiths, 1994; Rogers’, 1998) demonstrating the presence of high rates of cognitive biases in populations of problem gamblers, suggesting that irrational beliefs are what sustains the gambling habit.

Question 15

what did rogers do

Answer 15

Rogers (1998)
Examined cognitive biases amongst those who buy lottery tickets.
He found evidence of cognitive biases in the reasoning behind buying a lottery ticket.
For example, a belief in personal luck, the illusion of control, unrealistic optimism and gambler’s fallacy (assuming previous events will somehow influence future events).
This suggests that cognitive biases exist across other forms of gambling, not just those who play on fruit machines.

Question 16

Implications for treatment

Answer 16

An implication of the cognitive explanation of gambling addiction is that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) might be helpful in reducing gambling behaviour.

Question 17

What could CBT correct to reduce the motivation to gamble and how might this be achieved?

Answer 17

Cognitive therapy can help to address faulty thinking and correct cognitive biases, replacing irrational thoughts with more rational ones.

Question 18

However, irrational thinking varies with types of gambling:

Answer 18

Lund (2011) argues that some types of gambling are more likely than others to encourage cognitive biases and other irrational beliefs.
Lund studied the association between irrational beliefs and gambling preferences in nearly 5,000 adults. She found that increased frequency of gambling was related to increased cognitive biases, but this effect was stronger for some types of gambling than for others.
She found that cognitive biases were more likely in gamblers who preferred gambling machines and Internet gambling than sports betting and horse racing. These findings could be because the use of gambling machines and Internet games is characterised by the mistaken beliefs that skill is involved.
Lund concluded that the mistaken ideas of skill and illusions of control are important factors in the development of cognitive biases, which in turn can lead to gambling addiction.

This therefore adds support to the role of cognitive biases in gambling addiction, although it suggests that they play a more significant role in certain types of gambling that are perceived as more skill-oriented.

Question 19

other evaluation

Answer 19

Cause-effect issue: It is difficult to establish cause and effect – it is possible that the faulty cognitive style exhibited by problem gamblers is a by-product of the problem and is a result of being an addict.

The role of social factors needs to be considered and perhaps combined with cognitive factors:
Someone may be struggling with money and be motivated to gamble because of the prospect of a big win that could easily resolve their money worries.

Question 20

Clark et al. (2014)

Answer 20

identified a region of the brain that appears to play a critical role in the distorted thinking that makes people more likely to develop gambling addiction.
The researchers discovered that if this region (the insula) is damaged as a result of brain injury, then people become immune to cognitive biases such as the gamblers’ fallacy.
These findings therefore suggest that cognitive biases found in gamblers have a neurological basis.
This has far-reaching implications, as drug therapies could be developed in the future that target specific regions of the brain to reduce cognitive biases amongst problem gamblers.