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Underlying cognitions in the selection of lottery tickets
Journal of Clinical Psychology
Abstract
There is evidence that the faulty cognitions underlying an individual's playing behavior maintains and supports their gambling behavior. Sixty undergraduate students completed the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), a measure to assess pathological gambling, and a questionnaire ascertaining the type and frequency of their gambling activities. Sixteen Loto 6/49 tickets were presented to participants and ranked according to their perceived likelihood of being the winning ticket. The numbers on the tickets were categorized as: long sequences (e.g., 1-2-3-4-5-6), patterns and series in a pseudo-psychological order (e.g., 16-21-26-31-36-41), unbalanced (e.g., six numbers from 1-24 or 25-49), and those appearing to be random (e.g., 11-14-20-29-37-43). Verbal protocols of ticket selections were ranked into eight heuristics. Results revealed that for the entire sample the greatest percentage of tickets chosen for the first four selections were "random" tickets. Further, the most commonly cited reason for selecting and changing a lottery ticket was perceived randomness. The results are discussed with reference to the cognitions used when purchasing lottery tickets.
... Alcuni autori canadesi (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, Gupta; hanno cercato invece di indagare l'uso di euristiche da parte dei giocatori. I protocolli verbali delle selezioni dei biglietti sono stati categorizzati in otto euristiche. ...
... In pratica, le persone che giocano con una funzione regressiva, rispetto alle altre, si sentono molto più incitate al gioco e hanno un gioco superstizioso e irrazionale, come hanno rivelato anche altri studi (Gervasoni, 2000;Lavanco 2001). Il rapporto tra le cognizioni e il gioco era già stato segnalato in letteratura con l'uso delle euristiche nel Lotto (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, Gupta;. ...
In questo lavoro si parla di gioco, di inlusio, e dunque si cerca di mettere allo
specchio quella realtà con la quale, in questi anni, sono entrato in contatto nella mia vita lavorativa: con i rischi che lo specchio comporta (deformazioni, ambiguità), ma con i pregi innegabili che esso adduce (perspicuità, immediatezza). L’elaborato si struttura in quattro parti. Lo sforzo è stato quello di abbandonare quella dicotomia, diffusa nella letteratura e nel senso comune, che contrappone il gioco normale a quello patologico, e che finisce poi per studiare quest’ultimo a scapito del primo. Si è cercato dunque di studiare il gioco adulto da una prospettiva psicosociale: il gioco, entro certi limiti, è un bisogno umano incoercibile.
Il primo capitolo cerca di offrire un inquadramento generale sul gioco: si parte da cenni d’antropologia del gioco, per arrivare al tormentato rapporto tra le Istituzioni e il gioco. Vengono poi illustrati i dati sul mercato del gioco pubblico in Italia aggiornati al 2004, con particolare attenzione ai giochi del Lotto, Superenalotto, Totocalcio e Tris, oggetto di questa ricerca; un ultimo paragrafo è infine dedicato a quando il gioco può
diventare pernicioso, cioè patologico.
Nel secondo capitolo si compie una sintesi delle teorie psicologiche sul gioco: dal momento che non esiste ancora una teoria esaustiva, vengono illustrate le teorie psicodinamiche, comportamentiste e, soprattutto, quelle cognitiviste. Queste ultime sono quelle che sono state utilizzate in questa ricerca: il sensation seeking, il locus of control, le cognizioni irrazionali, i modelli della razionalità limitata, le strategie di pensiero
dei giocatori. Segue un paragrafo dedicato agli aspetti positivi del gioco, ed uno che concerne le surveys effettuate sulla psicologia del giocatore che sono più attinenti a questa ricerca.
Il terzo capitolo è dedicato alla ricerca vera e propria: vengono presentate
le ipotesi e una descrizione dettagliata dello strumento utilizzato
all’uopo: il questionario. Infine, sono illustrati i dati sul campione dei rispondenti.
Il quarto capitolo riguarda i risultati ottenuti nello studio: mentre la prima
parte li descrive, la seconda cerca di arrivare a plausibili conclusioni.
... Equally telling of RH is that lottery players who can choose their own numbers typically avoid recently drawn combinations (Clotfelter & Cook, 1993;Suetens et al., 2016;Wang et al., 2016), even though they are equally likely to come out in the following draws. Moreover, other types of preferences for particular combinations of numbers are often reported in Lotto gambles; namely, many players tend to spread their choice of numbers as evenly as possible (Lien & Yuan, 2015;Wang et al., 2016), and favor "random-looking" combinations, such as [12,23,24,27,31,39] over distinctive ones, such as [1,2,3,4,5,6] (Holtgraves & Skeel, 1992;Ladouceur et al., 1995;Henze & Riedwyl, 1998;Hardoon et al., 2001;Chóliz, 2010), even though the probability of winning is the same. Clearly, [1,2,3,4,5,6] is not representative of a uniform distribution over 1-49. ...
... Our main task was incentivized, involving a choice between real lottery tickets (from a state-wide lottery game) which, if drawn, could result in an exceptional win for the subject. This is in contrast to most previous studies on lottery ticket preferences (e.g., Holtgraves & Skeel, 1992;Ladouceur et al., 1995;Hardoon et al., 2001;Rogers &Webley, 2001 andChóliz, 2010), which involved merely hypothetical choices. Most of these used small student samples, whereas our subjects were a large and heterogeneous sample of passers-by in the streets of Warsaw, Poland. ...
The representativeness heuristic (RH) has been proposed to be at the root of several types of biases in judgment. In this project, we ask whether the RH is relevant in two kinds of choices in the context of gambling. Specifically, in a field experiment with naturalistic stimuli and a potentially extremely high monetary pay-out, we give each of our subjects a choice between a lottery ticket with a random-looking number sequence and a ticket with a patterned sequence; we subsequently offer them a small cash bonus if they switch to the other ticket. In the second task, we investigate the gambler's fallacy, asking subjects what they believe the outcome of a fourth coin toss after a sequence of three identical outcomes will be. We find that most subjects prefer "random" sequences, and that approximately half believe in dependence between subsequent coin tosses. There is no correlation, though, between the initial choice of the lottery ticket and the prediction of the coin toss. Nonetheless, subjects who have a strong preference for certain number combinations (i.e., subjects who are willing to forgo the cash bonus and remain with their initial choice) also tend to predict a specific outcome (in particular a reversal, corresponding to the gambler's fallacy) in the coin task.
... These authors emphasized that the main bias was not considering the independence of random events. Other works, like that of Hardoon et al. (2001), emphasized the randomness bias. Labrador (2010) found that 85% of game-related thoughts (concerning slot machines) are irrational in people without gambling problems. ...
... Also noteworthy is the fact that the mean score in pathological gamblers' cognitive distortions is 2.58 (rank 1-4), which implies a high level of belief in the distortions. Also, as noted in previous works, all participants, including the non-gamblers (1.63), present some level of belief in the cognitive distortions (Hardoon et al. 2001;Labrador and Labrador 2016;Ladouceur et al. 1996). ...
Cognitive biases or distortions related to gambling, present in all people, are considered a relevant factor in the development of gambling-related problems.
Objective:
to establish whether the presence of these biases or cognitive distortions, in gamblers and non-gamblers, is related to the presence of gambling problems.
Method:
3000 people aged 18-81 years, representative of the Spanish adult population, underwent a structured survey.
Results:
the presence of distortions was relevant to distinguish gamblers according to their level of gambling engagement and problems. There is a constant and significant tendency to have more cognitive distortions as gambling problems increase. But not all distortions have the same ability to distinguish between the different groups of gamblers. The results seem to group gamblers into three groups according to the presence of cognitive distortions, from less to more: (1) non-gamblers, (2) low-risk and at-risk gamblers, and (3) problem and pathological gamblers. The relevance of this research and its practical implications for both treatment and prevention work is discussed.
... Diese "wahrgenommene Zufälligkeit" verkörpert eine häufig anzutreffende Rationalisierung des Tippverhaltens sowohl bei Erwachsenen (z. B. Hardoon et al., 2001) als auch bei Kindern (z. B. Herman, Gupta & Derevensky, 1998). ...
... B. "Die Ziehung der Zahlenkombination 4, 15, 21, 26, 34, 47 ist wahrscheinlicher als die Ziehung der Zahlenkombination 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6") oder wissensbezogene Aussagen ("Durchschnittlich werden etwa 50% der Einsätze wieder an die Teilnehmer ausgeschüttet") umfassen. Die Selektion der zehn Behauptungen erfolgte in Anlehnung an die Ausführungen inBosch (2000),Coups et al. (1998),Hardoon et al. (2001) sowieRogers und Webley (2001). Für die Befragten besteht die Möglichkeit, den Behauptungen zuzustimmen, nicht zuzustimmen oder die Antwortvorgabe "Ich weiß nicht" anzukreuzen.(5) ...
... Gilles is convinced that certain sequences of color in roulette occur and that he can predict the results (i.e. predictive control), which highlights his misperception of the independence of chance events (Hardoon et al., 2001;Ladouceur et al., 1996). Overconfidence, that is, his tendency to display a confidence that is not justified by his actual abilities (Goodie, 2005;Koriat et al., 1980;Lakey et al., 2007), led him to be convinced that he is able to predict the outcome in a game of chance, which leads him to wager a large amount of money. ...
Blaszczynski and Nower conceptualized in 2002 an integrative Pathways Model leading to gambling disorder by postulating three subtypes of individuals with problem gambling characterized by common and specific characteristics (sociodemographic features, comorbidities, psychological factors). Here we propose a clinical illustration that fits each subtype. For each pathway, we (1) describe a corresponding clinical case, (2) propose a symptom-based clinical description, and (3) elaborate a process-based case formulation to explain the development and maintenance of the problematic gambling behavior. We argue that the clinical work with patients benefited from this two-level approach (symptoms vs. psychological processes) combined with a more holistic approach that takes into account intrapersonal (e.g. personality), interpersonal (e.g. family functioning), and environmental variables (e.g. life events). Crucially, our approach not only considers psychopathological dimensions (e.g. symptoms, diagnostic criteria), but it also views as central individual differences (personality traits) and cognitive and affective processes postulated to mediate relationships between biopsychosocial antecedents and psychopathological symptoms. In the current paper, we aim to demonstrate how the Pathways Model can be used as a framework to embrace a holistic perspective that promotes individualized and process-centered psychological interventions for individuals with gambling problems.
... They might choose their family members' birthdays -because these are special numbers (65). Or they avoid consecutive sequences (1-2-3-4-5-6), because they have a faulty belief that such sequences are less likely (66). In both cases, it is their pre-existing beliefs that guide the choice, not vice versa (see also 67). ...
E. J. Langer's paper, 'The illusion of control' (1975), showed that people act in ways that suggest they hold illusory beliefs in their ability to control the outcome of chance-determined games. This highly cited paper influenced the emerging field of gambling studies, and became a building block for cognitive approaches to problem gambling. Over time, this work has inspired therapeutic approaches based on cognitive restructuring, preventative programmes focused upon gambling myths and regulatory scrutiny of skill mechanics in modern gambling products. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying the 'illusion of control' remain elusive.
... of gambling despite the continued harms (Hardoon et al. 2001). In Brazil, gambling is a partially prohibited activity with lotteries, bingo, and horse-racing being the only legalized forms of gambling (Tavares 2014). ...
Gambling Disorder (GD) is characterized by persistent betting even in face of accruing debts and psychosocial hardship. Gambling Disorder behavior has been linked to conditioning, cognitive distortions and superstitious behavior. Previous studies have demonstrated that during response-outcome analytical tests (ROAT), non-gambling individuals are precluded from response extinction when failure feedback is suppressed, and develop superstitious behaviors and illusion of control instead.
Gambling can be regarded as a ROAT paradigm in which disordered gamblers (DGs) fail to compute failure feedback; hence they do not perceive the independence between response and outcome.
In order to investigate early phenomena on response and outcome processing in DGs, we developed two short ROAT versions, one with a controllable outcome and one with an uncontrollable outcome, both with explicit failure feedback. Twenty DGs and twenty healthy controls were assessed using this novel paradigm. Compared to controls, DGs reported higher distress during the controllable ROAT, less self-confidence in the uncontrollable ROAT, and more random responses and less use of analytical strategies in both tests, evidencing potential deficits in cognitive control. In contrast to previous findings, DGs did not demonstrate more superstitious beliefs, or illusion of control, and were generally more skeptical than controls regarding the controllability of both ROAT versions. Taken together, our findings provide some support for deficits in cognitive control in GD that precede illusion of control and superstitious behaviors.
... In other ethnic groups and cultures (e.g. Native Americans), the concepts of fate and a reliance on magical thinking may encourage gambling behavior in the same way as cognitive distortions do in pathological gamblers (Hardoon et al. 2001;Zitzow 1996a, b). Issues of social isolation, language barriers, and access to employment must also be clinically considered as factors which can drive immigrant populations towards pathological gambling behavior (Ngai and Chu 2001;Tse 2003). ...
A few studies have examined gambling behavior and problem gambling among minorities and reported higher rates of both participation and gambling problems among particular minority groups in comparison to Whites who gamble. The present study utilized a representative, epidemiological sample of adults in New Jersey to explore gambling behavior, gambling problem severity, substance use, problem behavior, and mental health issues among minorities. Univariate analyses were conducted, comparing Whites (n = 1341) to respondents who identified as Hispanic (n = 394), Black (n = 261), or Asian/other (n = 177). Overall, the highest proportion of Hispanics were high-risk problem gamblers. Hispanic participants were also significantly more likely than other groups to use and abuse substances and to report mental health problems in the past month, behavioral addictions, and/or suicidal ideation in the past year. Primary predictors of White high risk problem gamblers were being young and male with friends or family who gambled, fair to poor health status, substance use, gambling once a week or more both online and in land-based venues, and engaging in a number of gambling activities. In contrast, gender was not a predictor of minority high risk problem gamblers, who were characterized primarily by having friends or family who gambled, gambling online only, having a behavioral addiction and playing instant scratch-offs and gaming machines. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
... From a methodological perspective, the dissociations apparent in our data between confidence ratings and payment behaviour are problematic for the proposal that "post-decision wagering" can serve as a proxy for decision confidence (Persaud, McLeod, & Cowey, 2007). From the perspective of gambling policy, illusory control can be elicited within gambling games in a myriad of different ways: For example, lottery players like to choose their favourite numbers (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2001), and modern slot machines often include a stopping device to brake the spinning reels (Ladouceur & Sevigny, 2005). Our data support the inclusion of an "illusory control" variable in systems currently in development for gauging the likely public harms of any specific (e.g., new) form of gambling (e.g., Meyer, Fiebig, Häfeli, & Mörsen, 2011). ...
Illusory control refers to an effect in games of chance where features associated with skilful situations increase expectancies of success. Past work has operationalized illusory control in terms of subjective ratings or behaviour, with limited consideration of the relationship between these definitions, or the broader construct of agency. This study used a novel card-guessing task in 78 participants to investigate the relationship between subjective and behavioural illusory control. We compared trials in which participants (a) had no opportunity to exercise illusory control, (b) could exercise illusory control for free, or (c) could pay to exercise illusory control. Contingency Judgment and Intentional Binding tasks assessed explicit and implicit sense of agency, respectively. On the card-guessing task, confidence was higher when participants exerted control than in the baseline condition. In a complementary model, participants were more likely to exercise control when their confidence was high, and this effect was accentuated in the pay condition relative to the free condition. Decisions to pay were positively correlated with control ratings on the Contingency Judgment task, but were not significantly related to Intentional Binding. These results establish an association between subjective and behavioural illusory control and locate the construct within the cognitive literature on agency.
... Alongside these technological developments, research into the cognitive psychology of gambling has shown that irrational gambling--related cognitions and misunderstandings linked to randomness and probabilities represent some of the key components contributing to the initiation and maintenance of problematic gambling in general, and electronic gaming machines in particular (e.g., Blaszczynski & Nower, 2002;Coulombe, Ladouceur, Deshairnais, & Jobin, 1992;Gaboury & Ladouceur, 1989;Griffiths, 1994;Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky & Gupta, 2001;McCusker & Gettings, 1997;Parke, Griffiths & Parke, 2007;Sharpe, 2002;Walker, 1992). More importantly it has been shown that problematic gambling behaviour can be decreased in response to cognitive-behavioural therapy (Echeburua, Baez, & Fernades--Montalvo, 1996;Ladouceur et al., 2001;2003) and other cognitive interventions (Toneatto & Sobell, 1990). ...
... From a methodological perspective, the dissociations apparent in our data between confidence ratings and payment behaviour are problematic for the proposal that "post-decision wagering" can serve as a proxy for decision confidence (Persaud, McLeod, & Cowey, 2007). From the perspective of gambling policy, illusory control can be elicited within gambling games in a myriad of different ways: For example, lottery players like to choose their favourite numbers (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2001), and modern slot machines often include a stopping device to brake the spinning reels (Ladouceur & Sevigny, 2005). Our data support the inclusion of an "illusory control" variable in systems currently in development for gauging the likely public harms of any specific (e.g., new) form of gambling (e.g., Meyer, Fiebig, Häfeli, & Mörsen, 2011). ...
Illusory control refers to an effect in games of chance where features associated with skilful situations increase expectancies of success. Past work has operationalised illusory control in terms of subjective ratings or behaviour, with limited consideration of the relationship between these definitions, or the broader construct of agency. This study used a novel card-guessing task in 78 participants to investigate the relationship between subjective and behavioural illusory control. We compared trials in which participants (i) had no opportunity to exercise illusory control, (ii) could exercise illusory control for free, or (iii) could pay to exercise illusory control. Contingency Judgment and Intentional Binding tasks assessed explicit and implicit sense of agency, respectively. On the card-guessing task, confidence was higher when participants exerted control relative to the baseline condition. In a complementary model, participants were more likely to exercise control when their confidence was high, and this effect was accentuated in the pay condition relative to the free condition. Decisions to pay were positively correlated with control ratings on the Contingency Judgment task, but were not significantly related to Intentional Binding. These results establish an association between subjective and behavioural illusory control, and locate the construct within the cognitive literature on agency.
... This ability emerges early in the development, with infants as young as three months old engaging in probability matching to maximize their chances of detecting a target 5 . Besides, the tendency to seek for patterns in external events is so deeply rooted in brain functioning that individuals report having detected regularities in perfectly random sequences 6 or assume the existence of patterns even when this presumption negatively affects their choices 7,8 . ...
Current theories describe learning in terms of cognitive or associative mechanisms. To assess whether cognitive mechanisms interact with automaticity of associative processes we devised a shape-discrimination task in which participants received both explicit instructions and implicit information. Instructions further allowed for the inference that a first event would precede the target. Albeit irrelevant to respond, this event acted as response prime and implicit spatial cue (i.e. it predicted target location). To modulate cognitive involvement, in three experiments we manipulated modality and salience of the spatial cue. Results always showed evidence for a priming effect, confirming that the first stimulus was never ignored. More importantly, although participants failed to consciously recognize the association, responses to spatially cued trials became either slower or faster depending on salience of the first event. These findings provide an empirical demonstration that cognitive and associative learning mechanisms functionally co-exist and interact to regulate behaviour.
... Los estudios de aprendizaje secuencial implícito muestran mejoras en la ejecución en la tarea incluso cuando los sujetos no se han percatado de la existencia de patrones temporales (Cohen, Ivry y Keele, 1990;Curran y Keele, 1883;Willingham, Nissen y Bullemer, 1989;Nissen y Bullemer, 1987). La gente identifica estructuras en secuencias temporales a pesar de la consecuencias muchas veces negativas de esperar equivocadamente un patrón (Tversky y Kahneman, 1985), tal como al predecir con una máquina tragaperras o un billete de lotería (Hardoon et al, 2001). "El sistema cognitivo humano identifica patrones en secuencias de sucesos, sin considerar si existe verdaderamente un patrón" (Huettel, Mack y McCarthy, 2002, p. 485 sucede sin ningún esfuerzo atencional consciente y que el patrón identificado de regiones prefrontales es diferente del que se activa cuando se aprende conscientemente una secuencia de estímulos." ...
En el marco de la toma de decisiones bajo incertidumbre se han encontrado desviaciones de la racionalidad en sujetos normales (generalmente universitarios) que son sistemáticas y predecibles. El análisis de las diferencias individuales de estas desviaciones a través de los sujetos implica contextos explícitos e implícitos con características que pueden ser contrapuestas. En el contexto explícito (declarativo) encontramos que la capacidad cognitiva es un factor que reduce la irracionalidad, aunque muy parcialmente. Más importantes parecen ser las disposiciones mentales, unos rasgos de personalidad que pueden sesgar las decisiones. En el contexto implícito (procedimental), la predisposición humana a detectar patrones y reglas, que en general tiene un importante valor de supervivencia, parece generar un tipo de irracionalidad secundaria, que en situaciones especiales puede ponerse en evidencia. Estas situaciones se dan cuando las demandas de la tarea superan las capacidades del sujeto para resolverla.
Al estudiar los sistemas cognitivos de control desde un punto de vista neuropsicológico nos encontramos con unos procesos de búsqueda de patrones en la base de los denominados procesos cognitivos superiores. No obstante, esta búsqueda de patrones funciona con una gran autonomía. Hasta tal punto, que llega a interferir con la óptima toma de decisiones. Un ejemplo de ello podría ser el “efecto matching”, una estrategia de respuesta que es subóptima en tareas probabilísticas, consistente en responder cada alternativa de respuesta en proporción a su probabilidad de éxito. Se ha conjeturado que el efecto matching se debe a un efecto secundario debido a la búsqueda de patrones o reglas. Como en una tarea probabilística no hay ni patrones ni reglas, su búsqueda dificulta necesariamente el rendimiento óptimo.
Sin embargo, aunque algunos autores dan por sentada la mencionada conjetura, y hay una casuística recogida en la literatura, no se ha realizado una investigación sistemática. En cambio, hay interpretaciones que ponen en duda la existencia del efecto mismo. Este efecto podría utilizarse para estudiar de una manera sistemática este tipo de irracionalidad secundaria a la detección de patrones.
Por otra parte, al estudiar las consecuencias de un control cognitivo débil o alterado se ha encontrado en la esquizofrenia una inquietante paradoja: parece que realizan con la misma tasa de éxito que los sujetos normales una tarea de toma de decisiones considerada como similar a la toma de decisiones en la vida real: el Iowa Gambling Task.
Los sujetos esquizofrénicos, inesperadamente producen también efecto matching. El efecto es superior al del grupo normal, por lo que el rendimiento es peor. Este resultado es paradójico en el sentido de que los pacientes (quienes tienen menos capacidad ejecutiva) parecen ser generadores de reglas, tal como la gente normal con alta capacidad ejecutiva. Los pacientes encuentran reglas y patrones sin la guía de los módulos ejecutivos. Entonces, ¿en qué consiste exactamente la alteración del control cognitivo en la esquizofrenia?
Especialmente en el caso esquizofrénico, los resultados muestran una gran complejidad, probablemente debido al solape de diferentes trastornos dentro del grupo esquizofrénico. Mientras que el pensamiento normal podría ser controlado por funciones ejecutivas, el trastorno de pensamiento podría ser controlado por patrones espurios. La disfunción ejecutiva esquizofrénica podría estar compensada, en muchos casos, con el sistema de producción de reglas arbitrarias.
http://hdl.handle.net/10803/2706
... Research has consistently provided evidence connecting problem gambling to erroneous gambling cognitions, referred to as gambling-related cognitions (GRCs; Hardoon et al. 2001;Hardoon and Derevensky 2002). Problem gamblers often display distorted cognitions about gambling, such as superstitious beliefs in luck, illusion of control over game outcomes, and a lack of understanding about the independence of probabilistic events (Hardoon and Derevensky 2002). ...
The present study examined the link between problematic gambling and gambling related cognitions (GRCs) in a large sample of adolescents with (N = 266) and without (N = 1,738) special education needs (SEN) between the ages of 14 and 18 years attending several high schools in eastern central Ontario. The adolescents with SENs were identified as having various learning disorders and/or internalizing and externalizing problems [e.g., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)]. All adolescents completed a self-report questionnaire package that included the GRC Scale (GRCS; Raylu and Oei in Addiction 99:757-769, 2004), as well as measures of problem gambling, negative affect, and ADHD symptomatology. Results showed that adolescents with SEN hold more erroneous beliefs about gambling and had a higher risk of developing problematic patterns of gambling behaviour than their typically developing peers. Moreover, the GRCS subscales were found to be strong predictors of problem gambling among adolescents both with and without SEN, accounting for a substantial amount of the variance even when controlling for the effects of age, gender, ADHD, and negative affect. It is suggested that intervention and prevention programs aimed at adolescent gambling need to give particular attention to those with SEN.
... Psychological characteristics can include cognitive bias, money consciousness and hope. The individuals' faulty cognition (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky and Gupta, 2001) or cognitive bias (Ladouceur and Walker, 1996) has been found to maintain and support gambling behavior. Money consciousness has been defined as the belief that money is the most important thing in life and has been found to motivate the tendency to commit unethical behavior, such as stealing, lying or sexual misconduct (Ariyabuddhiphongs, in press). ...
This paper reviews lottery gambling research using Bandura's (1986) social cognitive model framework. It also describes a partial test of the model among lottery gamblers in Thailand. The study hypothesised that lottery gambling is related to income levels and that respondents high in cognitive bias, money consciousness and hope, and those whose family members also played lottery would bet more frequently and more money on lotteries and chase particular numbers. Nine hundred and fifty lottery gamblers participated in the study. Log linear modelling was used to analyse the data. The resulting models found cognitive bias, frequency and amount spent on lottery purchases in a three-way relationship. Levels of income, money consciousness, hope and family members' lottery play were related to the frequency and independently to amounts spent on lottery purchases. Cognitive bias, money consciousness, hope and family members' lottery play were related to chasing of particular lottery numbers. The results of the study confirm the validity of applying social cognitive models to lottery gambling and suggest that lottery gamblers be informed of their small chance of winning on lotteries.
... Consistent with these results were findings reported by Baboushkin, Hardoon, Derevensky, and Gupta (in press). In a study examining the underlying cognitions involved in the selection of lottery tickets, Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, and Gupta (2001) reported that participants were engaging in faulty cognitive rationalizations when selecting lottery tickets that they perceived to be more likely to win. More specifically, participants selected perceived 'randomness' (i.e. ...
The past decade has witnessed a widespread proliferation of gambling venues, increased participation in gambling activities and gambling-related problems, and, as a result, an expansion of research in this area. Research concerned with youth gambling has revealed that children and adolescents are at an increased risk for the development of gambling-related problems. There is a significant amount of evidence that suggests that underage youth are actively participating in both legal and illegal forms of gambling. With increases in the availability and accessibility of gambling activities, the problems that youth gamblers face are likely to increase and/or worsen. The growth of the current generation of youth involvement in gambling has not occurred without personal, social and economic costs. Between 4 and 8% of adolescents report significant pathological or problem patterns of gambling, whereas 10–15% remain at risk for the development of severe problems.
... Gambler's fallacy refers to the belief that the probability of an event is lowered when that event has recently occurred, even though the probability of the event is objectively known to be independent from turn to turn (136). Studies by Ladouceur and Dubé (139) and by Harddon, Deverensky and Gupta (140) have demonstrated that this types of beliefs are regular both in the general population and among pathological gamblers when confronted with games of chance. ...
... Biased players purchase 22.4 rows on average, compared with 19.0 for the other group, and the difference is clearly significant. 29 This supports the findings by Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky & Gupta (2001), Rogers & Webley (2001) and Coups et al. (1998. Source: Own calculations on data from Danske Spil A/S. ...
The law of small numbers is the fallacious belief that even small samples should closely resemble the parent distribution from which the sample is drawn. It is expressed through two opposite behaviors; the hot hand fallacy and the gambler's fallacy. Both have been demonstrated to exist in many different settings in previous research. Little empirical attention, however, has been given to study the link between the biases. The new data set acquired for this study allows a considerably more thorough analysis than seen in earlier studies. The results confirm earlier findings that hot hand-and gambler's fallacy behavior is prevalent among Lotto players; although it appears to be concentrated within a relatively small group. For the first time in field data this study shows evidence indicating that the two biases are not mutually exclusive, but depend on the time-horizon in the way predicted by recent behavioral theory. Further, I find that biased players gamble more, and there are weak indications that women and the elderly are more often biased.
... Es decir, todos los participantes que recibieron tratamiento, dejaran de jugar o no al finalizar el mismo, consiguen una cambio significativo en las distorsiones cognitivas en la dirección adecuada, pero sólo en algunos casos este cambio va acompañado del cese de la conducta de juego pato- lógico. En consecuencia, si por un lado jugadores y no jugadores presentan distorsiones cognitivas en relación al juego, y por otro la modificación de éstas en los jugadores no correlaciona con el éxito del tratamiento, al menos en algunos trabajos, o bien las distorsiones cognitivas no parecen constituir un factor suficiente para explicar por qué algunas personas juegan en exceso (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky y Gupta, 2001), o bien no se han considerado las distorsiones cognitivas realmente relevantes para el problema del juego. Antes de aceptar que las distorsiones cognitivas no tienen un valor determinante puede ser útil analizar si se dan diferentes tipos de distorsiones con efectos asimismo distintos sobre la conducta de juego. ...
Cognitive distortions and treatment success in pathological gambling. The verbalizations of 80 pathological gamblers, at a slot-machine gambling situation, were analyzed using the thinking aloud method, pre and post a treatment. The cognitive distortions included in these verbalizations are compared after the gambles were broken up in two groups, success and failure, according with the results of the treatment. At the pre-treatment the success group presents fewer verbalization at the distortion Chance as a selfcorrective process. At the pos-treatment there are no significative differences between both groups in any of the eight kinds of distortions under study. But the success group presents bigger reductions at all distortions, except illusion of control, specially at personification of the gambling machine and chance as a selfcorrective process. It is concluded that not all the cognitive distortions are of similar importance for the pathological gambling maintenance. The value of illusion of control is limited, but there most be bigger the value of personification of the gambling machine, considering chance as a selfcorrective process and belive in luck.
... Biased players purchase 22.4 rows on average, compared with 19.0 for the other group, and the difference is clearly significant. 29 This supports the findings by Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky & Gupta (2001), Rogers & Webley (2001) and Coups et al. (1998. Source: Own calculations on data from Danske Spil A/S. ...
The law of small numbers is the fallacious belief that even small samples should closely resemble the parent distribution from which the sample is drawn. It is expressed through two opposite behaviors; the hot hand fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy. Both have been demonstrated to exist in many different settings in previous research. Little empirical attention, however, has been given to study the link between the biases. The new data set acquired for this study allows a considerably more thorough analysis than seen in earlier studies. The results confirm earlier findings that hot hand- and gambler’s fallacy behavior is prevalent among Lotto players; although it appears to be concentrated within a relatively small group. For the first time in field data this study shows evidence indicating that the two biases are not mutually exclusive, but depend on the time-horizon in the way predicted by recent behavioral theory. Further, I find that biased players gamble more, and there are weak indications that women and the elderly are more often biased.
... Gamblers may thus expect that a run of losses is likely to increase the probability of a win occurring. Behaviour consistent with such a belief has been observed in the context of coin tossing, the effect of the timing of wins and losses on the frequency of gambling and to the manner in which people play the lottery (e.g., Clotfelter & Cook, 1993;Langer & Roth, 1975;Roney & Trick, 2003), and has been linked to an individual's gambling history (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2001). For example, the reliance on past events when gambling may lead an individual to expect more wins than is realistic and to misconceive the reliability of their observations (e.g., Keren & Lewis, 1994). ...
The present studies investigated the extent to which fruit-machine gamblers held erroneous beliefs, specifically the illusion of control and gambler’s fallacy. In Study 1, 9 participants were interviewed and their audiotaped responses submitted to a thematic analysis, which suggested that the 4 frequent gamblers were more likely to express beliefs and statements consistent with the cognitive biases of illusion of control and the gambler’s fallacy than the 5 infrequent gamblers. This observation was confirmed in the second study when the Gamblers’ Beliefs Questionnaire (GBQ) was completed by 37 participants (10 frequent gamblers, 11 infrequent gamblers and 16 non-gamblers). Frequent fruit machine gamblers were more inclined than infrequent fruit machine gamblers to express beliefs consistent with the cognitive biases, the illusion of control and the gambler’s fallacy.
... Results showed that subjects preferred numbers without repeating digits, and these numbers were actually more frequently chosen in the Indiana daily Pick-3 lottery (Holtgraves and Skeel 1992). Given four sets of 6/49 lottery numbers: long sequences, patterns in a pseudo-psychological order, unbalanced, and random-looking numbers, participants chose the random-looking sets using perceived randomness to justify their choice (Hardoon et al. 2001). ...
This paper presents an exhaustive review of the literature on lottery gambling involving numbers games, lotto, and scratch cards. Results provide tentative answers to the question why people buy lotteries, and support the theory of judgment under uncertainty, cognitive theory of gambling, and theory of demand for gambles. Results also indicate some potential addictiveness of this form of gambling. Youths buy different forms of lotteries and the best predictor of their lottery purchases is their parents' lottery participation. Contrary to the myth that a big lottery win will ruin the winners' lives, lottery winners tend to be well-adjusted and their life quality seems to improve. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
... Si jugadores y no jugadores presentan distorsiones cognitivas con relación al juego, quizá éstas por sí solas no constituyan un factor suficiente para explicar por qué algunas personas juegan en exceso (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky y Gupta, 2001). Una posibilidad alternativa es que, aunque los sesgos estén presentes tanto en jugadores como en no jugadores, la importancia (frecuencia o intensidad) de éstos sea significativamente mayor en los jugadores. ...
Se comparan las distorsiones cognitivas referidas al azar en jugadores patológicos, antes del tratamiento, versus un grupo de no jugadores o jugadores sin problema. La muestra está compuesta por 160 varones, 80 jugadores patológicos (DSM-IVTR; A.P.A. ), cuya actividad principal de juego eran las máquinas recreativas, y 80 varones sin problemas de juego. El objetivo es constatar si los sesgos cognitivos, respecto al juego, difieren en frecuencia e intensidad entre ambas muestras. Se evaluaron los sesgos cognitivos mediante: (a) observación sistemática en laboratorio (método de pensar en voz alta durante el juego) y (b) autoinforme (escalas Likert de estimación de probabilidades de ganar y atribución de los resultados). Existen diferencias significativas entre los jugadores patológicos y los no jugadores en las medidas más relevantes: (a) porcentaje de frases irracionales (30.31% versus. 8.28%); (b) tasa de irracionalidad en frases sobre estrategias (97% versus 82%), (c) estimación de posibilidades de ganar (38.46% vs. 26.92%), y (d) el porcentaje de los resultados atribuido a la suerte (44.30% vs. 19.74%). Los elevados valores de distorsiones cognitivas en los jugadores parecen un factor etiológico destacado en el desarrollo de las conductas de juego patológico. En consecuencia, al menos una parte del tratamiento debe dirigirse a modificar estas distorsiones.
... Players were more likely to bet on black if the previous outcome was red (75%) than if the previous outcome was black (50%). In a study of university students choosing lottery tickets, it was shown that players preferred tickets of apparently random numbers over tickets containing consecutive numbers (14-19), clusters of numbers (e.g. six numbers between 20 and 30), and numbers involving patterns (16-21-26-31-36-41;Hardoon et al. 2001). Recent work in sport fans has also looked at winning and losing 'streaks', arguing that most people perceive a 'streak' on the third consecutive win or loss event (Carlson & Shu 2007). ...
Gambling is a widespread form of entertainment that may afford unique insights into the interaction between cognition and emotion in human decision-making. It is also a behaviour that can become harmful, and potentially addictive, in a minority of individuals. This article considers the status of two dominant approaches to gambling behaviour. The cognitive approach has identified a number of erroneous beliefs held by gamblers, which cause them to over-estimate their chances of winning. The psychobiological approach has examined case-control differences between groups of pathological gamblers and healthy controls, and has identified dysregulation of brain areas linked to reward and emotion, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and striatum, as well as alterations in dopamine neurotransmission. In integrating these two approaches, recent data are discussed that reveal anomalous recruitment of the brain reward system (including the vmPFC and ventral striatum) during two common cognitive distortions in gambling games: the near-miss effect and the effect of personal control. In games of chance, near-misses and the presence of control have no objective influence on the likelihood of winning. These manipulations appear to harness a reward system that evolved to learn skill-oriented behaviours, and by modulating activity in this system, these cognitive distortions may promote continued, and potentially excessive, gambling.
... Such possible factors as motivations, expectations, baseline information and data, and varying levels of uncertainty (Ayton & Fischer, 2004; Kahneman & Tversky, 1970) allowed for an important glimpse into the heuristics and rules underpinning the process of judging chances of occurrence and randomness. Typically, most studies limited their hypotheses and examination to a single type of perception (e.g., gambling, sports, and the hot hand fallacy; Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2001; Rogers & Webley, 2001), purposefully avoiding generalizations regarding other types of events or perceptions (Alter & Oppenheimer). However, in hypothetical life situations, it is impossible to predict the actual chance that an event will occur. ...
The authors asked 220 undergraduate students to decide the extent to which a series of rare life events were random or nonrandom. The authors examined the associations of these perceptions with gender and locus of control (LOC). They also examined whether participants perceived events differently when arranged on 3 axes (positive events vs. negative events; natural events vs. person-related events; events happening to self vs. events happening to others). The results support most of the hypotheses. Participants with more external LOC perceived various events to be less random than did participants with more internal LOC. Male participants perceived various events to be more random than did female participants. Participants judged natural events to be more random than man-made events. Contrary to the authors' hypothesis, participants perceived positive events to be more random than negative events. There were also no differences between vignettes relating to self versus others. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for further research and the understanding of decision-making processes in everyday settings.
... In addition, self-report data suggests that this age cohort features prominently among patrons of electronic gaming machines once they have reached the legal age for participation in venues (18 years in Australia; 21 years in North America) (Moore & Ohtsuka, 1997; Nower, Derevensky, & Gupta, 2004). From the framework of cognitive psychology, it is postulated that irrational, gambling-related cognitions and misunderstanding concepts linked to randomness and probabilities represent the key components contributing to the initiation and maintenance of problematic gambling in general, and electronic gaming machines in particular (Blaszczynski & Nower, 2002; Coulombe, Ladouceur, Deshairnais, & Jobin, 1992; Gaboury & Ladouceur, 1989; Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky & Gupta, 2001; McCusker &Gettings, 1997; Sharpe, 2002; Walker, 1992). Support for the central role of maladaptive cognitions is found in studies showing that approximately three quarters of all gambling-related thoughts during electronic gaming machine play could be classified as irrational or erroneous in nature (Caron & Ladouceur, 2003; Delfabbro & Winefield, 2000; Gaboury & Ladouceur, 1989), and maladaptive cognitions account for differences between recreational and problem gamblers in response to gambling-belief questionnaires (Joukhador, Blaszczynski, & Maccallum, 2004; Joukhador, Maccallum, & Blaszczynski, 2003). ...
Electronic gaming machines are popular among problem gamblers; in response, governments have introduced "responsible gaming" legislation incorporating the mandatory display of warning signs on or near electronic gaming machines. These signs are designed to correct irrational and erroneous beliefs through the provision of accurate information on probabilities of winning and the concept of randomness. There is minimal empirical data evaluating the effectiveness of such signs. In this study, 93 undergraduate students were randomly allocated to standard and informative messages displayed on an electronic gaming machine during play in a laboratory setting. Results revealed that a majority of participants incorrectly estimated gambling odds and reported irrational gambling-related cognitions prior to play. In addition, there were no significant between-group differences, and few participants recalled the content of messages or modified their gambling-related cognitions. Signs placed on electronic gaming machines may not modify irrational beliefs or alter gambling behaviour.
... They concluded that participants who were able to select their own lottery ticket perceived their ticket as having a greater chance of winning and, as a result, assigned a higher monetary value to the ticket than individuals in the no-choice condition. Erroneous beliefs commonly held by adult gamblers were also identified in Hardoon et al. (1997) and Ladouceur and Walker (1996). Herman et al. (1998) studied the question as to when children's gambling behavior resembles that of adults. ...
In fixed-odds numbers games, the prizes and the odds of winning are known at the time of placement of the wager. Both players and operators are subject to the vagaries of luck in such games. Most game operators limit their liability exposure by imposing a sales limit on the bets received for each bet type, at the risk of losing the rejected bets to the underground operators. This raises a question--how should the game operator set the appropriate sales limit? We argue that the choice of the sales limit is intimately related to the ways players select numbers to bet on in the games. There are ample empirical evidences suggesting that players do not choose all numbers with equal probability, but have a tendency to bet on (small) numbers that are closely related to events around them (e.g., birth dates, addresses, etc.). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to quantify this phenomenon and examine its relation to the classical Benford's law. We use this connection to develop a choice model, and propose a method to set the appropriate sales limit in these games.
... -Autoinformes (Fernández-Montalvo et al., 1996;Toneatto et al., 1997). Así pues, si tanto jugadores como no jugadores presentan distorsiones cognitivas en relación al juego, la presencia de éstas, por sí solas, no parece constituir un factor suficiente para explicar por qué algunas personas juegan en exceso (Hardoon, Baboushkin, Derevensky y Gupta, 2001). No obstante, es posible que las distorsiones cognitivas tengan un papel relevante en este problema, pero sea necesario un análisis más minucioso. ...
En este estudio cuasi-experimental se analizan los cambios en las distorsiones
cognitivas de 80 jugadores patológicos tras un tratamiento psicológico. Empleando el
método de pensar en voz alta mientras juegan se constata una reducción significativa
en las distorsiones Predicciones, Azar como proceso autocorrectivo y Fijación en las
frecuencias absolutas. Posteriormente se estudia si las verbalizaciones de los jugadores,
tras el tratamiento, cambian hasta igualarse con las de un grupo control de 80 sujetos
no jugadores, en la misma situación. Tras el tratamiento, los jugadores, como grupo,
presentan menor número de distorsiones cognitivas en las categorías Ilusión de control,
Creencia en la suerte y Fijación en las frecuencias absolutas, distorsiones que en consecuencia
se consideran poco importantes en el mantenimiento del juego. Por otro lado,
se han eliminado las diferencias previas existentes en las categorías Predicciones, Azar
como proceso autocorrectivo y Personificación de la máquina, distorsiones que se
perfilan como las más importantes para el mantenimiento del juego.
Persistence of superstitions in the modern era could be justified by considering them as a by-product of the brain's capacity to detect associations and make assumptions about cause-effect relationships. This ability, which supports predictive behaviour, directly relates to associative learning. We tested whether variability in superstitious behaviour reflects individual variability in the efficiency of mechanisms akin to habit learning. Forty-eight individuals performed a Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT) or an Implicit Cuing Task (ICT). In the SRTT, participants were exposed to a hidden sequence and progressively learnt to optimize responses, a process akin to skill learning. In the ICT participants met with a hidden association, which (if detected) provided a benefit (cf. habit learning). An index of superstitious beliefs was also collected. A correlation emerged between susceptibility to personal superstitions and performance at the ICT only. This novel finding is discussed in view of current ideas on how superstitions are instated.
Background and aims:
Gambling education programs typically focus on promoting gambling as a high-risk activity with harmful effects; however, these programs demonstrate limited effects on the prevention of gambling problems. This paper proposes a clear theoretical framework to inform the content and delivery of gambling education initiatives and draws on psychological and pedagogical research to address some of the practical issues associated with its implementation.
Methods:
Literature was reviewed across fields of psychology, public health, and pedagogy to provide key recommendations to improve the outcomes of gambling education.
Results:
Four key recommendations were made for the development of future gambling education programs centering on theoretical approach, specialized content, and delivery.
Discussion and conclusions:
Recommended advancements are as follows: (a) evidence suggests shifting away from messages about gambling harms and instead applying a cognitive-developmental framework of problem gambling that may improve youth engagement by increasing personal relevance. (b) The cognitive model of problem gambling suggests that misconceptions about the profitability of gambling games (e.g., the gambler's fallacy) play an important role in the development of problems and should be a key target for education. However, exposing such misconceptions requires the challenge of teaching the mathematical principles that underpin them. (c) The pedagogical field provides valuable insights into teaching complex concepts. Research that applies the conceptual change model to science education suggests misconceptions also facilitate learning new complex information, such as gambling-related mathematical concepts (i.e., randomness and statistics). (d) In addition, improvements in computer-assisted teaching methods provide opportunities to use simulations and visualizations to help teach abstract concepts and correct such misconceptions.
Cognitive distortions are a central feature in the development and maintenance of gambling disorder, despite not being a diagnostic criterion. A substantial clinical literature confirms that targeting distortions in the context of cognitive behavioral treatment adds efficacy in individual and group settings, across demographics. Several current instruments measure illusion of control, gambler’s fallacy, and other distortions. However, they are subject to criticism such as lack of content validity through incompleteness or including noncognitive factors such as emotion or excessively broad cognitive factors such as cognitive bias, lack of factor analytic confirmation, and lack of measurement invariance confirmation. We advocate that the next step is to clarify what is and what is not a contributing cognitive distortion in gambling disorder, including clarification of illusion of control and other concepts with multiple definitions. It is concluded that a next generation of instruments, improved on these metrics, will contribute to increased understanding and treatment efficacy.
People who appear to believe in the hot hand expect winning streaks to continue whereas those suffering from the gamblers’ fallacy unreasonably expect losing streaks to reverse. 565,915 sports bets made by 776 online gamblers in 2010 were used for analysis. People who won were more likely to win again whereas those who lost were more likely to lose again. However, selection of safer odds after winning and riskier ones after losing indicates that online sports gamblers expected their luck to reverse: they suffered from the gamblers’ fallacy. By following in the gamblers’ fallacy, they created their own hot hands. Some gamblers consistently outperformed their peers. They also consistently made higher profits or lower losses. They show real expertise. The key of real expertise is the ability to control loss.
This chapter discusses six popular forms of gambling—lottery, scratch cards, roulette, fruit machines, sports betting, and card games—and indicates how they illustrate the way that people reason about money and probability. Then, it also discusses the economic, psychological and neurological roots of problem gambling. Roulette is a good game to discuss loss chasing. Loss chasing is characteristic of problem gamblers, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5). Problem gambling (gambling addiction, pathological gambling) is a mental disorder defined by DSM-5 as 'persistent and recurrent problematic gambling behavior leading to clinically significant impairment or distress'. For less severe problem gamblers, brief interventions such as warning messages have been used to reduce the gambling behaviour. This approach appears to be useful to some of them but not for others. Courses of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) typically last longer than brief interventions.
Principalul obiectiv al acestei cărţi delimitat prin titlu îl reprezintă cunoaşterea teoretică şi valorificarea practică a psihoterapiei jocului de şansă patologic util contextual şi realităţilor României contemporane.
Lucrarea sugestiv intitulată Psihoterapia jocului de şansă patologic este structurată pe un număr de cinci capitole majore, ce constituie reunite un demers original, sintetic şi, mai ales, psihoterapeutic al jocului de şansă patologic, capitole care sintetizează distinct şi cursiv în acelaşi timp, principalele momente ale acestui periplu editorial inovativ, de la apariţia şi dezvoltarea jocului la caracteristicile de personalitate ale jucătorului, de la diagnosticul şi evaluarea jocului, la tratamentul aceluiaşi jucător de şansă patologic, formulând atât de necesarele concluzii în plan psihoterapeutic.
Primul capitol este dedicat iniţial conceptualizării jocului de şansă patologic şi unui scurt istoric al acestuia, diferitelor sale modele şi teorii explicative, apoi factorilor implicaţi în dezvoltarea şi menţinerea formei patologice a jocului de şansă, etapizării apariţiei şi delimitării principalelor categorii de jocuri de şansă, încheind cu identificarea unora dintre consecinţele majore ale formei patologice a jocului de şansă şi cu atestarea prevalenţei formei sale patologice.
În concepţia autoarei forma patologică a jocului de şansă debutează, de obicei, ca o modalitate plăcută de petrecere a timpului liber dar, în timp, lucrurile pot să degenereze, în sensul că aceşti jucători devin efectiv dependenţi, cheltuind sume mari de bani şi confruntându-se cu stări emoţionale negative, cum ar fi, de exemplu, depresia, anxietatea, insomnia şi, în situaţiile cele mai grave, tentativele de suicid sau chiar suicidul.
Cel de al doilea capitol reprezintă o incursiune în universul complex al tipologiilor de personalitate ale jucătorului de şansă patologic, definind unele similitudini între tabloul clinic al jocului de şansă patologic şi tulburarea de personalitate borderline. În urma analizei lucrărilor de specialitate, autoarea constată că nu există un profil de personalitate valabil pentru toate persoanele ce practică forma patologică a jocului de şansă. Studiile au demonstrat că cei mai mulţi jucători prezintă simptome de depresie, anxietate, au o toleranţă scăzută la plictiseală, pot fi încadrate în categoria personalităţii dependente sau antisocial, dar nu s-a stabilit cu exactitate dacă aceaste trăsături sunt cele care contribuie la pierderea controlului şi instalarea dependenţei sau dacă nu cumva ele reprezintă, de fapt, doar consecinţe ale pierderilor suferite în timpul jocului. În încheierea capitolului regăsim conturat profilul psihologic al locuitorului din România care prezintă o formă patologică a acestui tip de joc.
Următoarele două capitole sintetizează şi reunesc natural diagnosticul, evaluarea şi tratamentul jocului de şansă patologic. Diagnosticarea este detaliată de la criterii la factori, accentuând prevenirea apariţiei şi prezentarea unui program caracteristic denumit „Joacă responsabil”, iar tratamentul dezvoltă tematic principiile şi stadiile schimbării în cadrul jocului, abordează diferenţiat şi studiază eficienţa terapiei cognitiv-comportamentale pentru jocul de şansă patologic, prezentând principalele modele de terapie cognitiv-comportamentală. Concluzia autoarei este aceea că, până în prezent, au fost efectuate puţine studii de verificare şi de validare a diferitelor forme de tratament pentru jocul de şansă patologic. În ceea ce priveşte tratamentul psihologic s-a acreditat ideea conform căreia terapia cognitiv-comportamentală s-a dovedit a fi în prezent cea mai eficientă metodă de tratament.
Consecventă cu acest punct de vedere autoarea propune un model de consiliere cognitiv-comportamentală ce este orientat în direcţia atingerii unor obiective, precum:
1. minimalizarea consecinţelor asociate comportamentului de joc de şansă patologic care se manifestă în viaţa subiecţilor care solicită tratament;
2. evitarea sau reducerea situaţiilor de risc de a dezvolta un comportament de joc de şansă patologic;
3. gestionarea stărilor emoţionale negative asociate acestei patologii (depresie, anxietate, stress);
4. satisfacerea nevoilor de divertisment şi dezvoltarea unor noi modalităţi plăcute de petrecere a timpului liber şi socializare, care să nu prezinte un efect distructiv asupra subiecţilor.
Elementele de bază ale modelului sunt atent detaliate în cadrul lucrării:
- psihodiagnosticul şi evaluarea clinică;
- psihoeducaţia în legătură cu comportamentul de joc de şansă
patologic;
- restructurarea cognitivă: intervenţia psihologică menită să ajute
clientul să-şi dezvolte o viziune realistă asupra rezultatelor jocului;
- trainingul de rezolvare de probleme;
- trainingul privind asertivitatea;
- prevenirea recăderilor;
- o bună relaţie terapeutică.
Scopul final al programului îl reprezintă fie abstinenţa totală a jucătorilor, fie practicarea unui joc controlat, după o perioadă de minim trei luni de abstinenţă, în cadrul căreia jucătorul să-şi însuşească pârghiile care să îl ajute să controleze jocul.
Apreciind demersul inovativ şi calitatea acestei cărţi, de mare utilitate practică, putem remarca atât pasiunea de cercetătoare ştiinţifică, înclinaţia spre modele şi modelare, cât şi motivaţia educaţională creativă, dorindu-i autoarei alte noi apariţii editoriale valoroase.
Prof. Univ. Dr. Nicolae Mitrofan
Differences on cognitive distortions during gambling in pathological gamblers and no-gamblers. The verbalizations of 80 pathological gamblers (DSM-IV) and 80 non-gamblers, during a slot-machine gambling situation, were analyzed using the much less thanthinking aloud methodmuch greater than. There are differences in the cognitive distortions of both groups. Pathological gamblers show higher percentages of result predictions, considering chance as a self-corrective process and personification of the gambling machine. Non-gamblers show higher percentages of illusion of control, belief in luck and attention to absolute frequencies. The presence of those cognitive distortions characteristics for the pathological gambling, can be crucial in the pathological gambling development and maintenance.
The verbalizations of 80 pathological gamblers (DSM-IV), in a slot-machine gambling situation, after a psychological treatment, were analyzed with the "thinking aloud method" in a cuasi-experimental study. There is a significative reduction at the post-treatment in three cognitive distortions types: Referring predictions, Considering chance as a self-corrective process and Absolute frequencies. After that, the pathological gamblers verbalizations at the post-treatment are compared with the verbalizations of 80 non gamblers. Non-gamblers show higher percentages of Illusion of control, Belief in luck and Attention to absolute frequencies. So, these cognitive distortions are considered as no very important in the maintenance of pathological gambling behaviour. After the treatment, the pre-treatment differences in Referring predictions, Considering chance as a self-corrective process and Personification of the gambling machine, between pathological gamblers and non gambles, are disappeared. So, these cognitive distortions are considered the most important in the maintenance of pathological gambling behaviour.
Pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder (ICD) characterized by loss of control over gambling behavior. This chapter will describe the illness profile of pathological gambling. As well as summarizing the epidemiological data on the prevalence of pathological gambling and its associated comorbidities, I will also consider (1) the classificatory overlap between pathological gambling, the substance use disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; (2) the emerging evidence for dimensional rather than categorical models of disordered gambling; and (3) some of the sources of hererogeneity among pathological gamblers, including the differences between common games. In the second part of the chapter, I will review several sets of psychological and neurobiological factors that are implicated in the etiology of pathological gambling, including the role of physiological arousal ("excitement"), conditioning influences, cognitive distortions, personality trait variables, and neuropsychological and neuroimaging markers. These mechanisms are often complementary, and a biopsychosocial theory of gambling will incorporate multiple levels of explanation.
This study examines the sentimental correlation of lottery prizes with household consumption via Grey relational analysis. An approximate correlation with sequential order rankings is identified. Results demonstrate that all top five lottery prizes are strongly correlated with rational addictive consumption and income categories. These lottery prizes show a relatively strong correlation with entertainment consumption and a negligible correlation with desperation consumption. Although jackpot exhibits an approximate strong correlation with alcohol consumption, other prizes show an approximate strong correlation with tobacco consumption. The top five prizes demonstrate a relatively strong correlation with restaurant, recreation, and traveling consumption, as well as a negligible correlation with food and education consumption. Lottery prizes are negligibly correlated with salary with the least sentiment.
Skala Myśli Związanych z Hazardem (Gambling Related Cognitions Scale – GRCS) jest jedną ze
standaryzowanych metod, za pomocą których na świecie dokonuje się pomiaru błędów poznawczych
(Raylu, Oei, 2004). Składa się ona z 5 podskal odpowiadających pięciu błędom poznawczym
związanym z hazardem: postrzeganie możliwości zaprzestania gry, kontrola predykcyjna, oczekiwania
hazardowe, błędy interpretacyjne oraz iluzja kontroli (O'Connor, Dickerson, 2003). Jest to
kwestionariusz samoopisowy, który bada podatność na powszechnie występujące zniekształcenia
poznawcze związane z graniem hazardowym.
WPROWADZENIE ............................................................................................................................... 7
Problem hazardu w Polsce ................................................................................................................ 7
Opis realizowanego projektu ............................................................................................................ 8
Procedura prowadzenia badań ....................................................................................................... 10
Bibliografia ........................................................................................................................................ 12
KRÓTKIE BIOSPOŁECZNE NARZĘDZIE PRZESIEWOWE DO HAZARDU – BBGS .......... 13
Podstawowe założenia i zastosowanie BBGS ................................................................................ 13
Właściwości psychometryczne polskiej wersji BBGS .................................................................. 15
Czułość .......................................................................................................................................... 15
Trafność ......................................................................................................................................... 16
Sposób prowadzenia badania i interpretacji BBGS ...................................................................... 16
Opis skali ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Sposób badania ............................................................................................................................. 16
Obliczanie i interpretacja wyników ........................................................................................... 17
Bibliografia ........................................................................................................................................ 17
ZAŁĄCZNIK: Arkusz BBGS .......................................................................................................... 19
KWESTIONARIUSZ MOTYWÓW HAZARDOWYCH - GMQ ................................................. 20
Konstrukcja GMQ ............................................................................................................................ 21
Badania z wykorzystaniem GMQ ................................................................................................... 21
Właściwości psychometryczne polskiej adaptacji GMQ ............................................................. 22
Struktura wewnętrzna ................................................................................................................. 22
Rzetelność ..................................................................................................................................... 23
Trafność ......................................................................................................................................... 23
Normalizacja ................................................................................................................................. 23
Sposób prowadzenia badania i interpretacji GMQ ...................................................................... 25
Opis skali ....................................................................................................................................... 25
Sposób badania ............................................................................................................................. 26
Obliczanie i interpretacja wyników ........................................................................................... 26
Bibliografia ........................................................................................................................................ 27
ZAŁĄCZNIK: Arkusz GMQ........................................................................................................... 29
KWESTIONARIUSZ PRZEKONAŃ I POSTAW WOBEC HAZARDU – GABS ...................... 30
Wprowadzenie teoretyczne ............................................................................................................. 30
Konstrukcja GABS ........................................................................................................................... 31
Badania z wykorzystaniem GABS .................................................................................................. 31
Właściwości psychometryczne polskiej adaptacji GABS ............................................................ 32
Struktura wewnętrzna ................................................................................................................. 32
Rzetelność ..................................................................................................................................... 33
Trafność ......................................................................................................................................... 33
Normalizacja ................................................................................................................................. 33
Sposób prowadzenia badania i interpretacji GABS ..................................................................… 35
Opis skali ....................................................................................................................................... 35
Sposób badania ............................................................................................................................. 35
Obliczanie i interpretacja wyników ........................................................................................... 35
Bibliografia: ....................................................................................................................................... 36
ZAŁĄCZNIK: Arkusz GABS .......................................................................................................... 38
SKALA MYŚLI ZWIĄZANYCH Z HAZARDEM – GRCS ............................................................ 40
Przekonania i błędy poznawcze związane z hazardem ................................................................ 40
Konstrukcja GRCS ........................................................................................................................... 41
Badania z wykorzystaniem GRCS .................................................................................................. 42
Właściwości psychometryczne polskiej adaptacji GRCS ............................................................ 42
Struktura wewnętrzna ................................................................................................................. 42
Rzetelność ..................................................................................................................................... 43
Trafność ......................................................................................................................................... 44
Normalizacja ................................................................................................................................. 44
Sposób prowadzenia badania i interpretacja GRCS .................................................................... 48
Opis skali ....................................................................................................................................... 48
Sposób badania ............................................................................................................................. 48
Obliczanie i interpretacja wyników ........................................................................................... 49
Bibliografia ........................................................................................................................................ 50
ZAŁĄCZNIK: Arkusz GRCS .......................................................................................................... 52
The presence of lotteries can be witnessed worldwide. Charitable lotteries are often portrayed as 'good works', and recently, hospitals have utilized them as a popular fundraising vehicle to raise necessary funds to help achieve organizational goals and objectives. Research indicates that lotteries contribute to gambling-related harms; however, research into charitable lotteries has been underdeveloped. Both the gambling and the health care industries are complex and evolving, consisting of many interacting stakeholders with often different and competing interests. This article seeks to present systems thinking as a conceptual framework to help fill the gap in understanding the use of gambling within hospitals and its possible benefits and unforeseen negative consequences. Addressing the gap in knowledge is important to help inform decision making aimed at reducing gambling-related harms.
This article proposes how the school of systems thinking, specifically framing hospitals as complex adaptive systems and system dynamics modelling, can be utilized to understand the policy implications of the adoption of lotteries as a revenue source for hospitals.
Hospitals have a duty to care, inform and protect. Hospital charitable lotteries have become big business; however, its incorporation into critical funding strategies needs to be carefully understood. Systems thinking theory and methodologies provide an integrated approach to examine this dynamic and evolving fundraising initiative. Findings from this article can inform the development of action strategies, including policy development at multiple levels.
There is broad agreement that cognitive distortions are an integral component of the development, maintenance, and treatment of pathological gambling. There is no authoritative catalog of the distortions that are observed more frequently in pathological gamblers than in others, but several instruments have been successfully developed that measure various distortions of interest, which are reviewed. All of the prominent instruments include measures of the illusion of control (perceiving more personal control over events than is warranted), and almost all include measures of gambler's fallacy (the belief that after a string of one event, such as a coin landing heads, an alternative event, such as the coin landing tails, becomes more likely). Beyond these two errors, there is scant consensus on relevant errors, and a wide variety has been studied. Meta-analyses were conducted on differences between PGs and non-PGs in scores on six published instruments that were developed to measure distortions in gamblers. All instruments reveal large effects using Hedge's g statistic, suggesting that the impact of distortions on PG is robust. Several subscales, assigned diverse names by scale authors, can be viewed as reflecting common distortions. Those judged to assess gambler's fallacy show evidence of more robust effects sizes than those that assess illusion of control. It is recommended that future research focus more specifically on the impact of particular distortions on gambling disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
The national lottery is often portrayed as a game of pure chance with no room for strategy. This misperception seems to stem from the application of probability instead of expectancy considerations, and can be utilized to introduce the statistical concept of expectation.
The literature on the role of cognitive distortions in the understanding and treatment of pathological gambling (PG) is reviewed, with sections focusing on (a) conceptual underpinnings of cognitive distortions, (b) cognitive distortions related to PG, (c) PG therapies that target cognitive distortions, (d) methodological factors and outcome variations, and (e) conclusions and prescriptive recommendations. The conceptual background for distortions related to PG lies in the program of heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1974) as well as other errors identified in basic psychology. The literature has focused on distortions arising from the representativeness heuristic (gambler's fallacy, overconfidence, and trends in number picking), the availability heuristic (illusory correlation, other individuals' wins, and inherent memory bias), and other sources (the illusion of control and double switching). Some therapies have incorporated cognitive restructuring within broader cognitive-behavioral therapies, with success. Other therapies have focused more narrowly on correcting distorted beliefs, more often with limited success. It is concluded that the literature establishes the role of cognitive distortions in PG and suggests therapies with particularly good promise, but is in need of further enrichment.
Cognitive measurement techniques, such as self-reports of behavior and reaction time measures, largely dominate the field of psychological research. It is uncommon for researchers to examine a phenomenon of interest by observing actual behavior within natural settings. To illustrate the existence of this methodological trend for gambling research, this article reviews systematically selected samples of the peer-reviewed literature related to lottery gambling in general and the literature related to pathological gambling and lottery more specifically. The results indicate that self-report surveys dominate the extant lottery literature, and experimental investigations of video lottery terminal gambling supplement those papers. This landscape encourages researchers to expand their methodological approaches to the study of lottery gambling. Currently, we know more about what research participants tell us they do with respect to lottery gambling than we do about their real-life lottery gambling behavior.
The present studies investigated the extent to which fruit-machine gamblers held erroneous beliefs, specifically the illusion of control and gambler’s fallacy. In Study 1, 9 participants were interviewed and their audiotaped responses submitted to a thematic analysis, which suggested that the 4 frequent gamblers were more likely to express beliefs and statements consistent with the cognitive biases of illusion of control and the gambler’s fallacy than the 5 infrequent gamblers. This observation was confirmed in the second study when the Gamblers’ Beliefs Questionnaire (GBQ) was completed by 37 participants (10 frequent gamblers, 11 infrequent gamblers and 16 non-gamblers). Frequent fruit machine gamblers were more inclined than infrequent fruit machine gamblers to express beliefs consistent with the cognitive biases, the illusion of control and the gambler’s fallacy.
Differences on cognitive distortions during gambling in pathological gamblers and no-gamblers. The verbalizations of 80 pathological gamblers (DSM-IV) and 80 non-gamblers, during a slot-machine gambling situation, were analyzed using the «thinking aloud method». There are differences in the cognitive distortions of both groups. Pathological gamblers show higher percentages of result predictions, considering chance as a self-corrective process and personification of the gambling machine. Non-gamblers show higher percentages of illusion of control, belief in luck and attention to absolute frequencies. The presence of those cognitive distortions characteristics for the pathological gambling, can be crucial in the pathological gambling development and maintenance Se analizan las verbalizaciones de 80 jugadores patológicos (DSM-IV) y 80 no-jugadores, en una situación de juego en una máquina tragaperras, mediante el método de «pensar en voz alta». Aparecen diferencias en el tipo de errores cognitivos cometidos. Los jugadores patológicos presentan mayores porcentajes de distorsiones cognitivas referidas a predicción de resultados, consideración del azar como proceso autocorrectivo y personificación de la máquina. Los no-jugadores presentan en mayor medida errores del tipo ilusión de control, creencia en la suerte y fijación en frecuencias absolutas. La presencia de estas distorsiones cognitivas específicas de los jugadores patológicos puede ser decisiva en el desarrollo y mantenimiento del juego
Prior research suggests that racial minority groups in the United States are more vulnerable to develop a gambling disorder than whites. However, no national survey on gambling disorders exists that has focused on ethnic differences.
Analyses of this study were based on the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a large (N=43,093) nationally representative survey of the adult (> or =18 years of age) population residing in households during 2001-2002 period. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition-Text Revision diagnoses of pathological gambling, mood, anxiety, drug use, and personality disorders were based on the Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-DSM-IV Version.
Prevalence rates of disordered gambling among blacks (2.2%) and Native/Asian Americans (2.3%) were higher than that of whites (1.2%). Demographic characteristics and psychiatric comorbidity differed among Hispanic, black, and white disordered gamblers. However, all racial and ethnic groups evidenced similarities with respect to symptom patterns, time course, and treatment seeking for pathological gambling.
The prevalence of disordered gambling, but not its onset or course of symptoms, varies by racial and ethnic group. These varying prevalence rates may reflect, at least in part, cultural differences in gambling and its acceptability and accessibility. These data may inform the need for targeted prevention strategies for high-risk racial and ethnic groups.
We demonstrate that regions within human prefrontal cortex develop moment-to-moment models for patterns of events occurring in the sensory environment. Subjects viewed a random binary sequence of images, each presented singly and each requiring a different button press response. Patterns occurred by chance within the presented series of images. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we identified activity evoked by viewing a stimulus that interrupted a pattern. Prefrontal activation was evoked by violations of both repeating and alternating patterns, and the amplitude of this activation increased with increasing pattern length. Violations of repeating patterns, but not of alternating patterns, activated the basal ganglia.
This article describes the development of the Massachusetts Gambling Screen (MAGS). The purpose of the MAGS is to provide a brief clinical screening instrument that can (1) yield an index of non-pathological and pathological gambling during a 5 to 10 minute survey or interview and (2) document the first psychometric translation of the proposed DSM-IV pathological gambling criteria into a set of survey or clinical interview questions. The development data for this instrument were obtained from a survey of 856 adolescents who were students in suburban Boston high schools. The results provided evidence that weighted item scores (i.e., discriminant function coefficients) could correctly classify 96% of adolescent gamblers as pathological, in transition or non-pathological when DSM-IV criteria were employed as the conceptual referent. The results also describe the prevalence of a variety of social and emotional problems associated with adolescent gambling. Finally, the discussion examined the normalization and contemporary social context of gaming and the impact of these influences on the measurement and identification of pathological gambling.
This article reviews the extant published and unpublished studies that estimate the prevalence of adolescent gambling problems in North America. The nine nonduplicative studies identified by our literature search included data collected from more than 7700 adolescents from five different regions of the United States and Canada. In addition to comparing the conceptual and methodological differences that exist among these studies, this article employed a meta-analytic strategy to synthesize prevalence estimates from the existing studies. This analysis revealed that within a 95 percent confidence interval, between 9.9% and 14.2% of adolescents are at risk of developing or returning to serious gambling problems. Similarly, between 4.4% and 7.4% of adolescents exhibit seriously adverse compulsive or pathological patterns of gambling activity. Finally, the discussion proposes a generic multi-level classification scheme to reconcile the divergent classification methods and data reporting strategies. This new multi-level approach to reporting gambling prevalence will facilitate interstudy comparisons among existing estimates of gambling prevalence and help to provide a general data reporting system for future research.
The rapid expansion of legalized gambling in the United States has produced tremendous demands for information about the number and characteristics of problem gamblers in the general population. This paper examines the results of prevalence studies of problem and pathological gambling that have been carried out in the United States. The discussion is largely chronological, with a focus on comparative findings from the 15 United States jurisdictions where prevalence studies have been completed since 1980. The results of diese studies verify findings from clinical and experimental studies as well as suggesting important avenues for future research. The paper concludes with a consideration of the role played by survey research in advancing the field of gambling research.
Although it has been determined that gambling is a popular activity amongst the young, there seems to be a lack of studies examining developmental differences in children's gambling behavior. This study examines developmental differences in children's blackjack gambling behavior. One hundred and four students (51 males; 53 females) from grades 4, 6, and 8 completed a questionnaire examining their gambling behavior in general and individually played a computerized blackjack game with the following data being recorded: percentage of accuracy, amounts of money bet, gross winnings, percentage of wins, number of hands played, and end balance. Findings revealed few developmental differences in prevalence and frequency of gambling behavior and performance on a blackjack task. Males were found to wager greater amounts of money and have larger gross winnings than females on the blackjack task. Furthermore, males were more likely to view gambling as involving both large amounts of skill and luck, thus suggesting an illusion of control for gambling activities. The results are discussed from a cognitive developmental perspective.
Conducted a series of 6 studies involving 631 adults to elucidate the "illusion of control" phenomenon, defined as an expectancy of a personal success probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability would warrant. It was predicted that factors from skill situations (competition, choice, familiarity, involvement) introduced into chance situations would cause Ss to feel inappropriately confident. In Study 1 Ss cut cards against either a confident or a nervous competitor; in Study 2 lottery participants were or were not given a choice of ticket; in Study 3 lottery participants were or were not given a choice of either familiar or unfamiliar lottery tickets; in Study 4, Ss in a novel chance game either had or did not have practice and responded either by themselves or by proxy; in Study 5 lottery participants at a racetrack were asked their confidence at different times; finally, in Study 6 lottery participants either received a single 3-digit ticket or 1 digit on each of 3 days. Indicators of confidence in all 6 studies supported the prediction. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent studies have shown the high prevalence of youth gambling behavior. In particular, lottery ticket purchases among children and adolescents appear to be a highly preferred activity. Despite this fact, most research has focused on the underlying erroneous cognitions used by adults when selecting lottery tickets. This study examines the cognitive perceptions of children while engaged in selecting 6/49 lottery tickets. One hundred sixty-seven children (61 females; 106 males) from grades 3, 5, and 7 were asked to rank pre-selected 6/49 lottery tickets which were classified into a) long series, b) specific patterns, c) non equilibrated numbers, or d) perceived random selections. Children verbalized their rationale for selecting each ticket and were permitted to change the numbers on the lottery tickets they liked least in order to make them to more likely to be the winning ticket. Findings, in general, revealed small developmental differences in the types of underlying cognitive heuristics used by the children. The use of cognitive heuristics underlying the concept of randomness and the use of significant and meaningful numbers was observed to increase as children got older. Children between 9 and 11 were found to have employed the cluster heuristic more frequently than older children, ages 12–13. The results are interpreted in terms of the cognitive developmental changes in children's perceptions and the potential implication for gambling prevention programs are provided.
Minnesota youth (15 to 18-years of age) were surveyed regarding their gambling experiences and psychosocial risk status. Gambling was reported by most of the subjects, with 8.7% classified as problem gamblers. Correlates of problem gambling included school difficulties, regular drug use, delinquency, parental gambling, and being male. Adolescent gambling is conceptualized as a normal experience of youth, yet those in the problem gambling group may be particularly vulnerable to future gambling problems.
The South Oaks Gambling Screen is a 20-item questionnaire based on DSM-III criteria for pathological gambling. It may be self-administered or administered by nonprofessional or professional interviewers. A total of 1,616 subjects were involved in its development: 867 patients with diagnoses of substance abuse and pathological gambling, 213 members of Gamblers Anonymous, 384 university students, and 152 hospital employees. Independent validation by family members and counselors was obtained for the calibration sample, and internal consistency and test-retest reliability were established. The instrument correlates well with the criteria of the revised version of DSM-III (DSM-III-R). It offers a convenient means to screen clinical populations of alcoholics and drug abusers, as well as general populations, for pathological gambling.
Eight hundred and ninety-two high school students from four New Jersey high schools were given a questionnaire concerning their gambling behavior. Ninety-one percent of the students had gambled at least once in their lifetime, 86% gambled in the last year and 32% gambled at least once a week. Using an index which was validated in other research (Lesieur, Blume, & Zoppa, 1986) 5.7% of the students showed clear signs of pathological gambling. The pathological gambling signs index was found to be correlated with sex, parental gambling problems, grade average, and the extent of gambling by the student.
Eight-hundred and seventeen adolescent high school students in the Montreal region completed the DSM-IV-J gambling screen along with a questionnaire devised by the authors inquiring about their gambling behavior, including items assessing the types of activities in which they engage, frequency of involvement, reasons for gambling, and their cognitive perceptions of gambling activities. The results indicate that, in general, 80.2% of students reported having gambled during the previous year, with 35.1% gambling a minimum of once per week. Adolescents reported participating in gambling behavior more often than any other addictive behavior, including cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and illicit drug use. The mean age of onset of gambling behavior for the sample was 11.5 years. The rate of pathological gambling was 4.7% as measured by the DSM-IV-J. Pathological gamblers were more likely to have parents with gambling problems and to be engaging in illegal activities than non-pathological gamblers. Gender differences were evident, with males engaging in gambling activities more than females. Differences in game preferences were found, with males more attracted to sports lottery tickets and sports pool betting and females more attracted to lottery tickets and bingo. Gambling awareness and prevention issues are addressed.
Many adolescents gamble, some gamble regularly and 2% to 5% suffer from pathological gambling (Jacobs, 1989; Ladouceur & Mireault, 1988; Lesieur & Klein, 1987). This study evaluated the efficacy of a pathological gambling prevention program conducted in five high schools in the Quebec City area. Based on an alcohol prevention program (Rhodes & Jason, 1988), it included the following components: the legality of gambling, the commercial nature of the activity, automatic gambling behaviors, pathological gambling and coping skills. Nine junior and senior classes participated in the program (N=134) and nine equivalent classes served as a control group (N=155). It was predicted that experimental subjects would increase their knowledge of gambling and pathological gambling, decrease their frequency of gambling and change their attitudes toward gambling. A six month follow-up confirmed the maintenance of newly acquired information toward gambling. Results confirmed the efficacy of the program in improving knowledge and skills for controlling gambling behavior at the end of treatment. The clinical implications of prevention programs for pathological gambling are discussed.
This study sought to determine if lottery play along with other possible causes engenders problem gambling. Problem gambling was defined as a progression and measured by three scales: Gambling behavior, loss of control over gambling and gambling consequences. Possible causes of problem gambling included lottery play, personality traits, exposure to gambling, leisure pursuits, marital status, residence, and other background characteristics of respondents. Respondents are a stratified random sample of adult residents of Iowa contacted by telephone in May-June, 1989. It was found that lottery play is a predictor of gambling behavior, as well as loss of control and gambling consequences when previous stages of problem gambling were deleted from the analysis as predictor variables. Other predictors of the latter stages of problem gambling include its earlier stages, as well as personality traits and various background characteristics of respondents. The relevance of the findings for theory and future research on gambling are discussed.
Pathological gambling creates enormous problems for the afflicted individuals, their families, employers, and society, and has numerous disastrous financial consequences. The present study evaluates the financial burdens of pathological gambling by questioning pathological gamblers in treatment in Gamblers Anonymous (n=60; 56 males, 4 females; mean age = 40 years old) about personal debts, loss of productivity at work, illegal activities, medical costs and the presence of other dependencies. Results show that important debts, loss of productivity at work and legal problems are associated with pathological gambling. Discussion is formulated in terms of the social cost of adopting a liberal attitude toward the legalization of various gambling activities.
It is suggested that commercial video-games (e.g.Nintendo &Sega) and gambling activities have similar attractive features and intermittent reinforcement schedules. This research seeks to examine the nature of this relationship amongst children. One hundred and four children aged 9 to 14, from grades 4, 6, and 8, participated. A questionnaire exploring issues related to video-game playing and gambling behavior in children and adolescents was completed and a computerized blackjack game was individually administered. High frequency video-game players were compared to low frequency video-game players with respect to their gambling performance on the blackjack gambling task as well as on information gathered from the questionnaire. Of particular concern is the risk-taking strategies used by avid video-game players, whether or not children perceive gambling and video-games as involving similar amounts of skill or whether they realize that gambling is primarily a game of chance. The findings, in general, suggest that high frequency video-game players gamble more than low frequency video-game players, report that gambling makes them feel more important, and take greater risks on the blackjack gambling task although no overall differences in success were found. Males exhibited greater risk-taking tendencies on the blackjack task than females. The clinical implications of the findings are addressed.
Although a single theory of the cognitive psychology of gambling is unlikely to fully explain persistent gambling, a number of recent studies have shown that there may be a strong cognitive bias involved in gambling behaviour. In this study a number of factors and variables relating to the cognitive psychology of fruit machine players were examined in 60 subjects (30 regular and 30 non-regular gamblers) in a British amusement arcade. This involved the use of the ‘thinking aloud method’ and an examination of the role of skill using both objective (behavioural) and subjective (self-report) measures. Results showed that regular gamblers produced significantly more irrational verbalizations than non-regular gamblers, and that on subjective measures regular gamblers were significantly more skill oriented. Results of the objective measures demonstrated that with the same amount of money regular gamblers can gamble more times than non-regular gamblers but this was not significant. The implications of these results are discussed and suggestions are made about the application of the results to the treatment of pathological gambling.
The present investigation focused on the spouses of compulsive gamblers and attempted to obtain baseline information on their personal characteristics, family backgrounds, as well as information about their awareness of gambling as a behavioral disorder, their reactions to the problems they encountered as a result of living with a compulsive gambler, and how they attempted to cope with those problems. The results indicate that the spouse of the compulsive gambler is affected by significant social, psychological, and economic stresses that can be directly related to the partner's gambling activities. The impact of such stresses can be observed in a variety of dysfunctional coping responses. The participants in this investigation eventually obtained assistance in dealing with their problems from Gam-Anon, the family counterpart of Gamblers Anonymous. But, prior to their contact with Gam-Anon, they sought assistance from members of the medical, religious, financial, legal, and mental health fields. For the most part such individuals were perceived as being unable to assist the survey participants in dealing with their problems. Recent advances in our understanding of the psychological bases of compulsive gambling and its treatement have led to the development of community-based treatment services for the gambler. The results of this investigation point out the need for the provision of services to those affected by the gambler as well.
This paper critically reviews prevalence estimates of problem and pathological gambling in Canada. Populations studied are adults, adolescents and primary school children. The proportions of pathological gamblers found in Canadian studies (ranging from 1.2% to 1.9% for adults) are similar to prevalence rates reported in the United States. Given the apparent link between gambling availability and increases in the prevalence of problem and pathological gambling, it is hoped that provincial and federal authorities in Canada will make investments in research and treatment of pathological gambling in the future.
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral treatment for adolescent pathological gamblers. Perception of control and severity of the problem served as dependent variables. Four adolescent pathological gamblers meeting DSM-III-R criteria were treated in a multiple baseline design across individuals. Results showed clinically significant changes for all subjects; they remained abstinent at 1-, 4-, and 6-month follow-ups. The clinical implications of these results are discussed.
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Treatment programs for adolescent problem gamblers: Some important considerations. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Psycho-logical Association
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Evaluating a states gambling strategy: The relationship between lottery sales and casino gambling
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- L Wallisch
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Children's cognitive perceptions of gambling using a 6/49 task
- J Herman
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Herman, J., Gupta, R., & Derevensky, J. (1998). Children's cognitive perceptions of gambling using a 6/49 task. Journal of Gambling Studies, 14(3), 227–244.
Cognitive biases and playing behavior on American roulette and the 6/49 lottery
- R Ladouceur
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Adolescent gambling and problem gambling in Alberta (Report prepared for the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission)
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- D Jacobs
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A cognitive perspective on gambling
- R Ladouceur
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