Robert Rogers

School of Psychology · Bangor University, North Wales

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs more commonly in military veterans than the general population. Whilst current therapies are effective, up to half of veterans commencing treatment do not complete it. Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) protocol is a novel, easy to train, talking therapy with promising findings. We ex...

Encouraging sustainable use of limited natural, social, and economic resources requires understanding the variety of ways in which people think about how resources work and how they adjust their behaviour (or not) as available resources fluctuate. Previous investigations which have focused on understanding how individuals navigate erodible resource...

Encouraging sustainable use of limited natural, social, and economic resources requires understanding the variety of ways in which people think about how resources work and how they adjust their behaviour (or not) as available resources fluctuate. Previous investigations which have focused on understanding how individuals navigate erodible resource...

Individuals and societies often struggle to use shared resources sustainably. Many previous investigations have used the resource management game (RMG) to investigate why groups of individuals often fail to sustain a shared resource, and how to improve cooperation. Much of this previous research has focused on the social aspects of resource managem...

Research into improving poor resource management has tended to focus on social interventions that mitigate so-called 'Tragedy of the Commons' outcomes. Less work has investigated interventions to help individuals better manage their personal resources. Over three studies (N=1,597), we test whether informational cues can improve resource management...

Military service, mental health, and gambling activities and motivations as predictors of problem gambling in a sample of UK AF veterans. Age-and-gender matched veterans (n = 1,037) and non-veterans (n = 1,148) completed an online survey of problem gambling, gambling motivation, mental health (depression and anxiety), and posttraumatic stress disor...

Introduction Military veterans are at heightened risk of problem gambling. Little is known about the costs of problem gambling and related harm among United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces (AF) veterans. We investigated the social and economic costs of gambling among a large sample of veterans through differences in healthcare and social service resource...

To choose exercise over alternative behaviours, subjective reward evaluation of the potential choices is a principal step in decision making. However, the selection of exercise intensity might integrate acute visceral responses (i.e. pleasant or unpleasant feelings) and motives related to goals (i.e. enjoyment, competition, health). To understand t...

Reward uncertainty can prompt exploration and learning, strengthening approach and consummatory behaviors. For humans, these phenomena are exploited in marketing promotions and gambling products, sometimes spurring hedonic consumption. Here, in four experiments, we sought to identify whether reward uncertainty-as a state of "not knowing" that exist...

RationaleProblematic patterns of gambling are characterised by loss of control and persistent gambling often to recover losses. However, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate initial choices to begin gambling and then continue to gamble in the face of losing outcomes.Objectives These experiments first assessed gambling and loss-chasing...

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) can sometimes be associated with patterns of play that are harmful to health and well-being. Hazardous MMORPG play has been linked to hostility (toward other people). However, little is known about how hostility, as a risk factor, relates to players' choices within games, or players' experie...

Rationale One risk factor for alcohol and substance misuse is hypomanic experiences, or periods of mood elevation. Young people who report hypomanic states are more likely to develop bipolar disorder (BP), and BP and other mood disorders increase the risk of addiction. We recently reported that young adults with a history of mood elevation experien...

Illusions of control (IOC) – beliefs that actions or rituals can influence ostensibly probabilistic game outcomes – are typically studied using questionnaires, think-aloud methods, or inferred from shifts in betting patterns following manipulations of IOC. However, naturalistic studies of dice-based games (e.g. ‘Craps’) suggest that IOC can be mani...

Internationally, problem gambling is elevated in Armed Forces veterans compared to the general population. Here, we re-examined the prevalence of problem gambling in veterans and non-veterans residing in England using an established large dataset and investigated whether gambling was associated with length of service, common mental health disorders...

Current concepts of the extended amygdala posit that basolateral to central amygdala projections mediate fear‐conditioned autonomic alerting, whereas projections to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis mediate sustained anxiety. Using DTI tractography in humans, we show that microstructure of the stria terminali correlate with an orienting bias...

Impulsivity is a prominent personality trait, and a key modulating component of neurologic and psychiatric disorders. How impulsivity is related to the brain mechanisms associated with action planning is poorly understood. Here, we investigated the relation between impulsivity and the modulation of beta band oscillatory activity associated with act...

People, like animals, tend to choose the variable option when given the choice between a fixed and variable delay to reward where, in the variable delay condition, some rewards are available immediately (Laura-Jean et al. 2019 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B374, 20180141. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2018.0141)). This bias has been suggested to reflect evolutionary pr...

Foraging and operant models suggest that animals will tolerate uncertainty or risk to obtain food quickly. In modern food environments, sustained access to quick energy-dense foods can promote weight gain. Here, we used a discrete-choice procedure to examine peoples' decisions about when next to eat high-value, palatable food rewards, probabilistic...

Electronic gambling machines (EGMs) show a strong association with gambling problems. The high speed of gaming offered by modern EGMs allows playing numerous games in a short span of time, which is thought to contribute to attentional distraction, increased spending and prolonged play. However, the relationship between EGM speeds and potentially ri...

Exercise is an important health behavior. Expressed reasons for participation are often delayed outcomes i.e. health threats and benefits, but also enjoyment. However, we do not know how people evaluate exercise as a reward. The value of rewards diminish the longer we have to wait for them and the discounting effect can undermine decision-making. H...

Background: Deficits in impulse control feature in many psychiatric conditions including bipolar disorder, suicidality and addictions. Lithium lowers impulsivity in clinical populations and decreases pathological gambling in experimental medicine studies, but suffers from adverse effects, poor compliance and a low therapeutic index. Aims: Recent...

Human history is studded with instances where instinctive motivations take precedence over ethical choices. Nevertheless, the evidence of any linking between motivational states and morality has never been systematically explored. Here we addressed this topic by testing a possible linking between appetite and moral judgment. We compared moral disap...

Problematic patterns of gambling and their harms are known to have culturally specific expressions. For ethnic Chinese people, patterns of superstitious belief in this community appear to be linked to the elevated rates of gambling-related harms; however, little is known about the mediating psychological mechanisms. To address this issue, we survey...

Psychopathy consists of a constellation of affective-interpersonal features including lack of empathy, callousness, manipulativeness and interpersonal charm, impulsiveness and irresponsibility. Despite its theoretical and predictive value in forensic contexts, the relationships between the psychometric dimensions of psychopathy, including its antis...

Serotonergic mechanisms mediate the expression of personality traits (such as impulsivity, aggression and anxiety) that are linked to vulnerability to psychological illnesses, and modulate the identification of emotional expressions in the face as well as learning about broader classes of appetitive and aversive signals. Faces with neutral expressi...

Background: Continued, persistent gambling to recover accumulating losses, or 'loss-chasing', is a behavioral pattern linked particularly closely to gambling disorder (GD) but may reflect impaired decision-making processes relevant to drug addictions like cocaine-use disorder (CUD). However, little is known regarding the neurocognitive mechanisms...

The nature of the association between Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) and gambling problems remains uncertain. Eye-tracking offers a potentially powerful method to understand how individuals attend to the visual displays and features of machine games as a function of machine experience, use of other commercial gambling products, the degree to w...

The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of 4 weeks high intensity intermittent Taekwondo (TKD) training program on body composition, physical fitness and performance of South African TKD athletes of Zulu ancestry. Thirty four (n=34) active TKD athletes aged 20–26 y volunteered for this study. The athletes were divided into control...

Media reports suggest high rates of gambling amongst professional footballers but little is known about how footballers develop and then seek help for gambling problems. Here, we report the findings of in-depth, qualitative interviews with 11 British professional footballers who had, or who were, being treated for gambling problems at a residential...

Gambling problems have been linked to suicidal ideation and enhanced risk of suicide attempts. However, we know very little about the factors associated with either thoughts or acts of self-harm amongst people who gamble. A web-based study of 4125 online gamblers (79% males; mean age 35.5 years), analysed using hierarchical multiple regression, rev...

RationaleLithium remains the most effective treatment for bipolar disorder and also has important effects to lower suicidal behaviour, a property that may be linked to its ability to diminish impulsive, aggressive behaviour. The antioxidant drug, ebselen, has been proposed as a possible lithium-mimetic based on its ability in animals to inhibit ino...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with disrupted relationships with partners, family, and peers. These problems can precipitate the onset of clinical illness, influence severity and the prospects for recovery. Here, we investigated whether individuals who have recovered from depression use interpersonal signals to form favourable apprai...

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder (BD) are common psychiatric diagnoses. Impulsivity and affective instability are prominent features of both illnesses, complicate treatment and are associated with poor clinical outcomes. Yet, little is known about sensorimotor control in these populations, whether they differ...

Poor decision-making is a feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder (BD). Twenty women with BPD, 20 women with BD, and 20 healthy females completed a risky choice task. Those with BPD exhibited altered processing of information about potential gains and losses, with a bias toward large compared to small gains, large comp...

Heightened impulsivity and cognitive biases are risk factors for gambling problems. However, little is known about precisely how these factors increase the risks of gambling-related harm in vulnerable individuals. Here, we modelled the behaviour of 87 community-recruited regular, but not clinically problematic, gamblers during a binary-choice reinf...

Background North American studies show bipolar disorder is associated with elevated rates of problem gambling; however, little is known about rates in the different presentations of bipolar illness.AimsTo determine the prevalence and distribution of problem gambling in people with bipolar disorder in the UK.Method The Problem Gambling Severity Inde...

Research into language-emotion interactions has revealed intriguing cognitive inhibition effects by emotionally negative words in bilinguals. Here, we turn to the domain of human risk taking and show that the experience of positive recency in games of chance-the "hot hand" effect-is diminished when game outcomes are provided in a second language ra...

Accuracy of risk assessment instruments in predicting violence may appear poor if substantial numbers of study participants subsequently reoffend non-violently instead of violently as predicted. This study examined effects of changing the violent outcome on predictive accuracy of five instruments (OGRS, RM2000(V), VRAG, PCL-R, HCR20) for 1,353 male...

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder (BD) have overlapping clinical presentations and symptoms - sources of persistent clinical confusion. Game-theory can characterize how social function might be sub-optimal in the two disorders and move the field beyond the anecdotal description of clinical history. Here, we tested the hypot...

Increased activity within known reward-processing neurocircuitry (e.g., ventral striatum, VS) has been reported among medicated individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) I and II. However, such findings are confounded by the potential ameliorative effects of mood-stabilizing and antipsychotic medications on neural activations. This study tests the hyp...

Methylphenidate mainly enhances dopamine neurotransmission whereas 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy") mainly enhances serotonin neurotransmission. However, both drugs also induce a weaker increase of cerebral noradrenaline exerting sympathomimetic properties. Dopaminergic psychostimulants are reported to increase sexual drive, whil...

Individuals with gambling or substance-use disorders exhibit similar functional alterations in reward circuitry suggestive of a shared underlying vulnerability in addictive disorders. Additional research into common and unique alterations in reward-processing in substance-related and non-substance-related addictions may identify neural factors that...

How do people sustain resources for the benefit of individuals and communities and avoid the tragedy of the commons, in which shared resources become exhausted? In the present study, we examined the role of serotonin activity and social norms in the management of depletable resources. Healthy adults, alongside social partners, completed a multiplay...

Detecting subtle indicators of trustworthiness is highly adaptive for moving effectively amongst social partners. One powerful signal is gaze direction, which individuals can use to inform (or deceive) by looking toward (or away from) important objects or events in the environment. Here, across 5 experiments, we investigate whether implicit learnin...

Individuals switch from risk seeking to risk aversion when mathematically identical options are described in terms of loss versus gains, as exemplified in the reflection and framing effects. Determining the neurobiology underlying such cognitive biases could inform our understanding of decision making in health and disease. Although reports vary, d...

Preference reversals (PRs) occur when one’s preferences over the same items change depending upon how one is asked to construct a preference. PRs are a robust phenomenon that lead to suboptimal real-world decision making. Despite this, it remains unclear why PRs occur. This study investigated whether biological procedural invariance (i.e., differen...

Cognitive distortions regarding gambling outcomes confer vulnerability to pathological gambling. Using a rat slot machine task (rSMT), we previously demonstrated that the nonspecific D2 agonist quinpirole enhances erroneous expectations of reward on near-miss trials, suggesting a pivotal role for the D2 receptor family in mediating the near-miss ef...

Background Mood elevation is common in adolescents and young adults. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of a bipolar diagnosis and co-morbidity in individuals identified by online screening for experience of (hypo)manic symptoms in order to better define the common bipolar phenotype in young people. Methods Survey data regardi...

Effective decision-making can involve using environmental signals about the possible good and bad outcomes, and their probabilities, to select optimal actions. Problematic decision-making in psychiatric disorders, and particularly bipolar illness, may result from disrupted use of these reinforcement cues, leading to actions that reflect or precipit...

Objective: An association between bipolar disorder and cognitive impairment has repeatedly been described, even for euthymic patients. Findings are inconsistent both across primary studies and previous meta-analyses. This study reanalysed 31 primary data sets as a single large sample (N = 2876) to provide a more definitive view. Method: Individu...

Depression frequently involves disrupted interpersonal relationships, while treatment with serotonergic anti-depressants can interfere with libido and sexual function. However, little is known about how serotonin activity influences appraisals of intimate partnerships. Learning more could help to specify how serotonergic mechanisms mediate social i...

Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) have been inconsistent in demonstrating impairments in gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) structures in bipolar disorder (BD). This may be a consequence of significant confounding effects of medication, illness histo...

Detecting subtle indicators of trustworthiness is highly adaptive for moving effectively amongst social partners. One powerful signal is gaze direction, which individuals can use to inform (or deceive) by looking toward (or away from) important objects or events in the environment. Here, across 5 experiments, we investigate whether implicit learnin...

Trait sensation-seeking, defined as a need for varied, complex, and intense sensations, represents a relatively underexplored hedonic drive in human behavioral neuroscience research. It is related to increased risk for a range of behaviors including substance use, gambling, and risky sexual practice. Individual differences in self-reported sensatio...

Cognitive perspectives on gambling propose that biased thinking plays a significant role in sustaining gambling participation and, in vulnerable individuals, gambling problems. One prominent set of cognitive biases include illusions of control involving beliefs that it is possible to influence random gaming events. Sociologists have reported that (...

Electronic gaming machines (EGMs) offer significant revenue streams for mercantile gambling. However, limited clinical and experimental evidence suggests that EGMs are associated with heightened risks of clinically problematic patterns of play. Little is known about the neural structures that might mediate the transition from exploratory EGM play t...

Gambling to recover losses is a common gaming behaviour. In a clinical context, however, this phenomenon mediates the relationship between diminished control over gambling and the adverse socioeconomic consequences of gambling problems. Modelling loss-chasing through analogous behaviours in rats could facilitate its pharmacological investigation as...

We sought to explore the interaction of the impulsivity trait with response uncertainty. To this end, we used a reaching task (Pellizzer and Hedges in Exp Brain Res 150:276-289, 2003) where a motor response direction was cued at different levels of uncertainty (1 cue, i.e., no uncertainty, 2 cues or 3 cues). Data from 95 healthy adults (54 F, 41 M)...

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing...

Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant that increases extracellular levels of dopamine and noradrenaline. It can diminish risky decision-making tendencies in certain clinical populations. MPH is also used, without license, by healthy adults, but the impact on their decision-making is not well established. Previous work has found that dopamine recepto...

Twenty-four adults (aged 19-35) and 27 adolescents (aged 13-14) played as 'Trustee' in an iterated Trust Game against a pre-programmed set of 'Investor' moves, said to belong to an unknown co-player. Trustee behaviour was examined first in response to normative Investor cooperation, and then in response to a period of social rupture caused by reduc...