evaluation

• issue with this theory is that it doesn't take into account gender differences, as research shows that it is possible that male and female gambling addicts have different cognitive errors.
• gender differences example

  Ibánez et al. (2003) investigated gender differences in gambling and found that a higher % of men than women had been exposed to gambling in adolescence.
• gender differences example

  women had a later age of first bet and a faster evolution of the disorder

  male gamblers also had a higher comorbidity for alcohol abuse and antisocial behavioural disorder, whilst females had a higher rate of emotional disorders, and a history of physical abuse.
• gender differences link

  weakens the ecological validity of this explanation as since it is doesnt take into account gender differences, it is not generalisable to the wider population.
• supporting evidence to support the link between cognitive biases and addiction
• supporting evidence example

  Griffiths (1994) compared the verbalisations of 30 regular gamblers with 30 non-regular gamblers while they were playing a fruit machine.

  he found that regular gamblers showed more irrational verbalisations (14%) than the non-regular gamblers (2.5%.)

  the verbalisations also showed evidence of many heuristics and biases.
• supporting evidence link

  this study shows a clear difference in the cognitions of problem gamblers and other gamblers, suggesting that cognitive biases could be a useful explanation for addiction.
• limited in only being able to describe cognitive biases, but does not examine the root cause of these thoughts.
• descriptive theory explain

  explanations of behaviour should be able to predict what will happen in certain circumstances, but with cognitive biases, it is impossible to predict when a particular bias might be used.
• descriptive theory example

  Griffiths (2013) gives the example of the triple rollover in the National lottery, where the media reported that the number 13 had come up fewer times than any other.
• descriptive theory example

  those gamblers with representativeness bias (believing it was due to appear) would pick 13, whereas those with availability bias (believing as it wasn't common it was unlikely) would not pick it.
• descriptive theory link

  due to this theory being descriptive rather than explanatory, it is limited in being able to explain addictive behaviour, as cognitive biases are unable to be used to predict behaviour.

  a good theory should be able to create predictions about people's behaviour.