cognitive approach to gambling

• gamblers gamble cause of a cognitive distortion

  cognitive distortion - an irrational thought so that people perceive reality differently
• initiation - cost benefit analysis

  to start gambling - fun/could win/feeling of control

  to NOT start gambling - anxiety/financial losses
• maintenance

  cognitive bias - addicted gamblers thinking is biased towards perceiving favourable outcomes e.g near miss bias
• maintenance

  irrational thoughts about how luck and chance work e.g gamblers fallacy. - the belief in which one random outcome can influence another random outcome.

  illusions of control- they think that they can influence the outcome by doing 'special' things e.g touching the machine before having their turn.
• relapse

  -gamblers are at risk of relapse because of cognitive bias

  -recall biases - remember successes and forget losses

  -overestimate benefits of gambling and underestimate costs - distorted cost benefit analysis.
• GRIFFITHS - key study

  • found that regular gamblers saw themselves as more skillful than non-gamblers when there was no difference between them.
  • regular gamblers made more irrational statements and explained their losses as near misses or near wins.
• evaluation of griffiths

  + high ecological validity as carried out in an actual casino

  --might have found it uncomfortable to think and say things aloud and might find it unnatural
• eval

  + there are effective treatments based on the cog approach, as they directly address the addicted gamblers cognitive biases and irrational thoughts, and replace them with more rational ways of thinking.
• eval

  --the expectancy theory cannot fully explain the link between cognitions and gambling. - many people might have irrational thoughts about gambling but only a few people begin to gamble - if they do then only 1-3% of them have problems to control their behaviour - LADOUCERUR 1966

  can then suggest that cognitive factors are not enough