Addictive Behaviour - Cognitive Explanation

• Heuristics


  Mental shortcuts that allow us to make decisions quickly and with little effort
• Heuristics are undoubtedly vital for humans to function, but they can lead to errors
• Advantage


  Evidence to support the cognitive bias explanation of addiction
• Disadvantage

  HOWEVER, research into cognitive biases often require participants to report to researchers what they are thinking, and this creates a range of problems. For example, questionnaires such as the Gambling Brief Questionnaire rely heavily on the gambler being honest about what they are thinking, which could be subject to issues such as SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS and DEMAND CHARACTERISTICS. This implies that the research has low internal validity and makes the research less accurate.
• These errors may be able to explain why some people engage in addictive behaviour, even though logically they should not
• Cognitive biases


  • Gambler's fallacy
• Two heuristics


  • Representativeness
  • Availability
• Another problem with cognitive biases as an explanation of gambling is that they may merely provide a DESCRIPTION of the thoughts and gamblers, RATHER THAN A TRUE EXPLANATION of what causes gambling
• Gambling Brief Questionnaire


  • 65-item scale that covers a range of cognitive biases
• Explanations of behaviour should be able to predict what will happen in certain circumstances, but the problem with cognitive biases is that it is impossible to predict
• When a particular heuristic is selected on the wrong occasion

  It can cause problems from behaviour and contribute to a gambling addiction
• Problem gamblers


  Scored higher on the Gambling Brief Questionnaire across almost all the different beliefs assessed
• Availability heuristic


  Events that are more easily recalled from memory may bias our assessment of how likely an outcome is
• In this case using the representativeness bias would pick 13, whereas those using the availability bias would not pick it
• Problem gamblers vs social gamblers

  Difference in cognition, suggesting cognitive biases could be a useful explanation for addiction
• Cognitive factors to explain addictive behaviour

  • One of the biggest benefits is its application to treatments such as cognitive restructuring, where clients are taught to see that the thoughts they are having whilst gambling are irrational
• JOUKHADOR ET AL. developed the Gambling Brief Questionnaire
• This illustrates that using cognitive biases as an explanation does not allow predictions about behaviour to be accurately made
• Availability heuristic


  May cause gamblers to overestimate their likelihood of winning the jackpot
• Regular gamblers in the study were surprised by what they heard, suggesting that they may find it useful in overcoming their problems
• The study compared responses on the Gambling Brief Questionnaire between 56 problem gamblers and 52 social gamblers
• The gambler's own experiences can contribute to the availability heuristic
• Memories of winning are more "available" than the ones of losing, so the gambler will overestimate their chances of winning
• Companies that make gambling machines are aware of availability heuristic
• Representativeness heuristic


  Our representative heuristic tells us that the chance of heads and tails is even, even though in reality the chance of the next toss being tails is unchanged, unaffected by what has come before
• Gambler's fallacy


  The cognitive bias where a gambler may feel that a bet is a "sure thing" due to the representativeness heuristic telling them that an outcome is due
• Gamblers may feel that after a run of losing bets they are "due" a win, and so may persist in gambling behaviour