Cognitive Explanation

• Cognitive psychologists propose that addictions

  become entrenched through cognitive biases.
• Addictions are as the result of cognitive distortions or maladaptive thought processes.
• Wagenaar identified 16 cognitive distortions that gamblers have. He found that their reasoning and perception of control is at odds with reality.
• Availability 


  Memories of wins can be recalled more easily than memories of losses.
• Confirmation Bias 


  Focusing on information that is consistent with the belief that they are lucky.
• Concrete Information BiaS


  Focusing on events such as big wins and downplaying statistical facts such as losses.
• Hindsight Bias 


  Looking back and saying a big loss was ‘expected’ - this gives the gambler a false sense of control. This is an expectancy.
• Flexible Attribution


  Claiming that wins are due to their skills and losses are due to other people / faulty machines. This is an example of attribution bias.
• Illusion of Control


  The feeling that they can exert control over uncertain outcomes. This is an example of self-efficacy.
• Supporting Evidence - Griffiths (1994) Method


  Gathered 30 regular gamblers and 30 non-regular gamblers and asked them to articulate their thoughts whilst playing on a slot machine.

  Participants were given £3 and each stake was 10p - 60 total gambles
• Supporting Evidence - Griffiths (1994) Findings

  Regular gamblers thought that they were more skill full than they actually were.

  They also made irrational comments personifying and talking to the machine.

  Griffiths also found they attribute wins to skill over chance.
• Evaluation of Griffiths' study 


  Perception of ‘skill’ may actually have just been proficiency at using the machine.

  The research also gives a valuable insight into the thought processes of gamblers
• Rogers (1998) -found there were consistent biases including belief in personal luck, unrealistic optimistic and the gambler‘s fallacy
• Issues with self-report methods - reliability has been criticised by Delfabbro. Biases being recorded were difficult to falsify, idiosyncratic and only contextually relevant in certain cultures
• Practical application in the form of CBT - The knowledge of how gamblers think and how their thoughts can be distorted is invaluable for treating the addiction.
• Causality difficult to establish - unclear whether cognitive biases and faulty information processing are the result of gambling or the cause of it
• Environmental factors overlooked - It is likely that there are social factors involved in gambling becoming addictive