Cognitive biases

• What are the cognitive biases?

  Gamblers fallacy

  Illusion of control

  Near miss bias

  Recall bias
• What is the gambler’s fallacy?

  The belief that random events will equal themselves up over time

  ”I haven’t had a win in a while, so I’m due one”
• What is illusion of control?

  The belief they can influence the result because of skill rather than luck

  Eg nudging the machine
• What is the near miss bias?

  Constantly losing but viewing this as nearly winning
• What is the recall bias?

  The tendency to remember wins whilst forgetting about losses
• What did Griffiths find about cognitive bias?


  Regular gamblers made six times as many irrational statements that irregular gamblers

  1/3 of regular gamblers continued playing until they lost all their money
• What did the national gambling clinic find?


  80% of gambling-related verbalisations made by pathological gamblers are irrational
• How do cognitive biases explain automatic thoughts?


  Frequent gamblers place bets automatically
• What is some evidence for automatic thoughts?

  Getting and McCuster (1997) - modified stroop test with gambling words

  Gamblers took longer to process the colour of the ink when the word was related to gambling

  Suggesting they were automatically processing the gambling words
• What are the methodological issues of investigating cognitive biases?

  Studying utterances involves self-report so the thoughts are unfalsifiable

  Some thoughts may be unconscious, or social desirability may play a part, as gamblers may not want to be judged for their verbalisations
• How do gamblers demonstrate low self efficacy?


  Believe they cannot give up gambling