The role of perceived control and overconfidence in pathological gambling (original) (raw)
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How do gamblers maintain an illusion of control?
Journal of Business Research, 2015
Introduction: Gamblers' enduring illusions of control (IOC) may be one reason why they continue to gamble in the face of sustained losses. If gamblers persist in the belief that they have special skills, knowledge and other advantages when gambling, they may be able to convince themselves it is worth doing again. Maintaining an IOC requires selective attention of the illusion supporting moments during the construction of an evaluation of a gambling session. Objective: Test the hypothesis that selected moments, specifically the moment of the highest win and the last moment of the gaming session, explain the retrospective evaluation of the session for gamblers high in the illusion of control. Method: A total of 102 and 35 experienced gamblers were recruited from gambling venues and participated in two studies by gambling on 20 occasions on coin toss outcomes. Participants were asked to evaluate their enjoyment of the gambling experience they had just completed, and completed an IOC Beliefs Questionnaire designed to measure the extent to which they believe they are good at influencing gambling outcomes. Results: Gamblers with a high IOC use the largest win in their evaluation when they lose. This is consistent with the motivated selective attention hypothesis. Non-threatened gamblers, those with a low IOC or winners, use the final outcome as the determinant of their evaluation of the gaming session. Conclusion: The results suggest that instead of altering an important characteristic of self, gamblers instead reflect on the moment of a gambling episode that does not threaten, and in fact supports, their ability to find patterns in random events. Indicators of the illusion could be used to assist gamblers in controlling their own behavior.
Confidence and risky decision-making in gambling disorder
Journal of behavioral addictions, 2023
Background and aims: People with Gambling Disorder (GD) often make risky decisions and experience cognitive distortions about gambling. Moreover, people with GD have been shown to be overly confident in their decisions, especially when money can be won. Here we investigated if and how the act of making a risky choice with varying monetary stakes impacts confidence differently in patients with GD (n 5 27) relative to healthy controls (HCs) (n 5 30). Methods: We used data from our previous mixed-gamble study, in which participants were given the choice of a certain option or a 50/50 gamble with potential gains or losses, after which they rated their confidence. Results: While HCs were more confident when making certain than risky choices, GD patients were specifically more confident when making risky choices than certain choices. Notably, relative to HCs, confidence of patients with GD decreased more strongly with higher gain values when making a certain choice, suggesting a stronger fear of missing out or "anticipated regret" of missing out on potential gains when rejecting the risky choice. Discussion: The current findings highlight the potential relevance of confidence and "regret" as cognitive mechanisms feeding into excessive risk-taking as seen in GD. Moreover, this study adds to the limited previous work investigating how confidence is affected in value-based risky contexts.
Low Trait Self-Control in Problem Gamblers: Evidence from Self-Report and Behavioral Measures
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2011
Problems with self-control are seen as a key cause of problem gambling behavior. Yet, self-control is rarely studied directly in gambling studies. We demonstrated that self-report and behavioral measures (derived from the strength model of self-control) show lower trait self-control in problem gamblers. In Study 1, a sample of 2,208 undergraduate students from the University of Guelph, Canada (73% female, mean age = 19 years, SD = 4) completed a self-report measure of self-control strength. In Study 2, a sample of 296 University of Guelph students and staff (58% female, mean age = 19 years, SD = 2) completed multiple behavioral measures of self-control strength. Both studies demonstrated that, compared to lower-risk gamblers, higher-risk gamblers have relative trait self-control deficits. Keywords Trait self-control Á Problem gambling Á Self-report measure Á Behavioral measure Self-control problems are at the heart of problem gambling. Indeed, ''repeated, unsuccessful attempts to resist the urge [to gamble] in the context of a genuine desire to cease, is the central, diagnostic and foundational feature of pathological gambling'' (Blaszczynski and Nower 2002, p. 488). Understanding how loss of self-control leads to problem gambling and how gains in self-control reduce gambling severity are critical to developing treatment programs (Sharpe 2002; Williams et al. 2007). Despite its central importance in understanding problem gambling, there are few studies examining self-control in a gambling context, and those few studies are problematic. As Xuan and Shaffer (2009) pointed out, the association between gambling severity and individual differences in trait self-control rests mainly on self-report findings embedded in unclear conceptualizations of self-control. Moreover, more attention has been paid to identifying predictors of impaired self-control than to measuring self-control itself. Past research on self-control and problem gambling has worked to identify determinants of
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2013
Different classification systems for erroneous beliefs about gambling have been proposed, consistently alluding to 'illusion of control' and 'gambler's fallacy' categories. None of these classification systems have, however, considered the how the illusion of control and the gambler's fallacy might be interrelated. In this paper, we report the findings of a confirmatory factor analysis that examines the proposal that most erroneous gambling-related beliefs can be defined in terms of Rothbaum et al.'s (1982) distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' illusory control, with the former being driven to a large extent by the well-known gambler's fallacy and the latter being driven by a complex of beliefs about supernatural forces such as God and luck. A survey consisting of 100 items derived from existing instruments was administered to 329 participants. The analysis confirmed the existence of two latent structures (beliefs in primary and secondary control), while also offering support to the idea that gambler's fallacy-style reasoning may underlie both perceived primary control and beliefs about the cyclical nature of luck, a form of perceived secondary control. The results suggest the need for a greater focus on the role of underlying processes or belief structures as factors that foster susceptibility to specific beliefs in gambling situations. Addressing and recognising the importance of these underlying factors may also have implications for cognitive therapy treatments for problem gambling.
Control over gambling: Solution or problem?
1998
There is more than one sense in which people believe they control their gambling. First there is the adaptive sense of having control over whether and how much to gamble. Other less adaptive strategies include holding superstitious beliefs that winning can be influenced by thoughts or actions such as 'thinking positively'. Another sense in which gamblers try to take control is through the fantasy that they will get their lives back in order through a 'big win'. The aim of this study was to assess the association between beliefs about control and gambling behaviour among young people aged 15 to 25 years (N= 1017). Results indicated that irrational control beliefs were strongly associated with problem gambling. Young problem gamblers were more likely to believe they needed money and that gambling would provide it. In addition, young problem gamblers had more faith in gambling techniques of various kinds, and in their ability to manipulate chance, and 'beat the system'.
The influence of cognitive factors on pathological gambling
Journal of Gambling Studies
The purpose of this study wasto examine the role of cognitive factors, such as superstition, locus of control, decision-making and unrealistic optimism,on gambling.Eighty-six subjects participated in this study. They were divided into four groups: non-players, social players, problem gamblers, and pathological gamblers. Groups were formed on the basis of South Oaks Gambling Screen Scale. Results showed that pathological gamblers group obtained a high superstition index. With reference to unrealistic optimism, gambler groupbelieved that they had a better chance of success compared to non-gamblers. They also showed a higher impulsivity index in decision making than non-gamblers. This study supports the idea that cognitive factors such as superstition, unrealistic optimism, impulsivity and external locus of control are involved in gambling.
A cognitive neuroscience approach to studying the role of overconfidence in problem gambling
Research on the neural correlates of decision making in gambling tasks may be informative for understanding problem gambling. The present study explored confidence and overconfidence using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure brain activity during a judgment task. Nineteen undergraduates who self-identified as frequent gamblers (average age 19.7 years; 5 females, 14 males) participated in this study. Participants first completed the DIGS (Winters, Specker & Stinchfield, 2002), a measure of gambling pathology. They then engaged in a behavioral task of confidence assessment, wherein they answered two-alternative trivia questions and estimated the probability that each answer was correct. In a subsequent MEG task, they viewed the questions and a target answer, and indicated with a button press whether the target matched the correct answer. Confidence was directly related to activity in the right prefrontal cortex. Matching and mismatching targets were associated with activity in the medial occipital cortex and left supramarginal gyrus, respectively. An interaction of pathology and match/mismatch was observed in the right inferior occipital-temporal junction region, showing more activity following a mismatch in non-problem gamblers, but not in problem gamblers. Implications of the results for understanding of top-down modulation and attentional systems are discussed in relation to gambling behavior.
Gambling Increases Self-Control Strength in Problem Gamblers
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2012
In two studies it is demonstrated that, in the short-term, slot machine gambling increases self-control strength in problem gamblers. In Study 1 (N = 180), participants were randomly assigned to either play slot machines or engage in a control task (word anagrams) for 15 min. Subsequent self-control strength was measured via persistence on an impossible tracing task. Replicating Bergen et al. (J Gambl Stud, doi:10.1007/s10899-011-9274-9, 2011), control condition participants categorized as problem gamblers persisted for less time than did lower gambling risk participants. However, in the slot machine condition, there were no significant differences in persistence amongst participants as a function of their gambling classification. Moreover, problem gambling participants in the slot machine condition persisted at the impossible tracing task longer than did problem gambling participants in the control condition. Study 2 (N = 209) systematically replicated Study 1. All participants ini...
Journal of Gambling Studies, 27(2), 271-285.
Two experiments examined the relationships between the knowledge that another person has won in a gamble, the illusion of control and risk taking. Participants played a computer-simulated French roulette game individually. Before playing, some participants learnt that another person won a large amount of money. Results from a first experiment (n=24) validated a causal model where the knowledge of another person's win increased the illusion of control, measured with betting times, expectancy and selfreports on scales, which in turn encourages risk taking. In the second experiment (n=36), some participants were told the previous player acknowledged the win to be fortuitous. The suppression of the belief that the previous winner had himself exerted control over the outcome resulted in lower rates of risk-taking behaviors. This suggests that it was not the knowledge of another person's win in itself that increased risk taking, but rather, the belief that the other person had some control over the gamble's outcome.