Griffiths, 1994 (Gambling) ⭐️

Question 0

What are heuristics?

Answer 0

Strategies we use to work something out or solve a problem. They can be based on rules, guesses or common sense.

Question 1

What is gambling?

Answer 1

The activity of wagering money (or other valuables) on an event where you do not know the outcome.

Question 2

What is illusion of control? (Cognitive Biases)

Answer 2

Behaviours which give you the illusion you are in control e.g. Lottery (allowing you to pick your own numbers). Control makes the player think there is skill involved.

Question 3

What is flexible attributions? (Cognitive Biases)

Answer 3

Gambler’s self esteem is supported by attributing success to their own skill and failure to some external influence.

Question 4

What was the thinking aloud technique?

Answer 4

This involved participants saying out loud every thought that comes into their mind. In the study, half of the gamblers and non-gamblers were asked to think aloud whilst playing the fruit machine. They were asked not to censor their thoughts but to verbalise everything, even if it seemed irrelevant, without trying to justify it.

Question 5

What was the aim of the study?

Answer 5

To compare the behaviour and thought processes of regular (RG) and non-regular (NRG) fruit machine gamblers. In particular to look for cognitive biases.

Question 6

What were the three main hypothesis and the added hypothesis?

Answer 6

1) There would be no difference between regular and non regular fruit machine gamblers on objective measures of skill.
2) Regular gamblers will produce more irrational verbalisations then non regular gamblers.
3) Regular gamblers would be more skill orientated than non-regular gamblers on subjective measures of self-report.

4) Thinking aloud participants would take longer to complete the task than non-thinking aloud participants.

Question 7

What is the IV in the study?

Answer 7

Whether participants are regular or non regular gamblers.

Question 8

What are the DVs in this study? (3)

Answer 8

• Skill on fruit machines.
• Content analysis of utterances from thinking aloud method.
• Subjective measures of skills perception from the past experimental semi-structured interview.

Question 9

What is the method of the study?

Answer 9

A quasi field experiment.

Question 10

Describe the participants.

Answer 10

• 60 participants
• Mean age: 23.4 years
• 30 RGs (29 males, 1 female)- recruited by other regular gamblers.
• 30 NRGs (15 males, 15 females)- at least once played on a fruit machine
• Volunteers (responded to a poster in Plymouth)

Question 11

Describe the procedure of the study.

Answer 11

All participants were tested individually. They were all given £3 to gamble on the fruit machine (equal to 30 plays) in a local arcade. The game selected was FRUITSKILL, although some players moved on to other games. They were asked to stay on the machine for at least 60 gambles (meaning they break even and win back the £3). At this point they were allowed to either keep the £3 or carry on gambling. RG and NRG were randomly allocated to either “thinking aloud” or “non thinking aloud” conditions. Participants has to verbalise everything they were thinking whilst playing and this was recoded using a lapel microphone. After the session in the arcade, semistructured interviews were held. Questions included, “Is there any skill involved in playing the fruit machine?” or “How skilful do you think you are compared to the average person?”

Question 12

Why was the thinking aloud technique used?

Answer 12

It’s considered the best method for evaluating cognitive processes (what a person is thinking while gambling).

Question 13

Why was the inter-rater reliability low?

Answer 13

One rater knew very little about fruit machine gambling and therefore couldn’t understand the terminology. The other rater wasn’t there during recording of the utterances so had no context and could not make sense of the utterances.

Question 15

What were the two other results that were not linked to the hypothesis?

Answer 15

• 14 RGs and 7 NRGs managed to break even and stay on for 60 gambles.
• 10 RGs stayed on until they lost everything (only 2 NRGs continued).

Question 16

What were the results of the study?

Answer 16

• There was no difference in objective measures of skill (no difference in total winnings) between RGs and NRGs but RGs played faster (8) than NRGs (6).
• RGs who thought aloud had a lower win rate than NRGs.
• RGs made more percentage verbalisations in categories 1 (personifying the machine) and 21 (reference to number system).
• NRGs made more verbalisations in questions relating to confusion and miscellaneous utterances.
• 14% of RGs gave more irrational verbalisations than NRGs (2.5%).
• NRGs said they were below average but RGs said they were above average (from interview).
• RGs were more skill orientated than NRGs.

Question 17

What does the study show?

Answer 17

• The study shows that regular fruit machine gamblers are not significantly more skilled on fruit machines than non-regular gamblers.
• Some gamblers objected to being told which machines to use (illusion of control).
• RGs knew in advance that they’ll play until they lose their money (playing for social reasons and that playing itself is a reward.)
• RGs are more skill orientated than NRGs (using self comparison ratings and interview)
• Audio play-back therapy: Playing their recordings to them in hope to moderate or stop their gambling.

Question 18

What are the strengths of the method used?

Answer 18

• High ecological validity (took place in an arcade in Plymouth), although Ps aren’t using their own money.
• Cognitive biases are investigated in the thinking aloud method and semi-structured interviews. This allows us to compare data gathered in different ways.

Question 19

What are the weaknesses of the method used?

Answer 19

• Thinking aloud: not really reflect all thoughts, hard to do and analyse.
• Inter-rate reliability was low (one rater knew very little and other wasn’t present during recording)
• Investigator Bias (Griffiths watching them encouraged them to play longer)
• Play back of recording may have embarrassed them.

Question 20

Was the sample representative?

Answer 20

• Volunteer sample is not representative

- Gender imbalance in the RG group but does actually represent the population as most fruit machine gamblers are males.

Question 21

What type of data was collected?

Answer 21

• Quantitative: behavioural data was quantitative to establish any differences between conditions, thus comparisons.
• Qualitative: verbalisations but were soon categorised and then given frequencies of occurrences became quantitative.
• Semi structured interviews collected both types of data.

Question 22

What would you change?

Answer 22

• Sample: 1 female in RG is not representative. Use female gamblers too. More data, can apply to females (generalisability). Not a lot of females play on fruit machines anyway so it’s already quite representative. Time and cost.
• Data: (Qualitative) Not a lot of info about female gamblers so get more info about them. Reasons gamblers started gambling. More research about participants so they have better conclusions.