Title: Role%20of%20cognitive%20bias%20and%20skill%20in%20fruit%20machine%20gambling
1Role of cognitive bias and skill in fruit machine
gambling
- Professor Mark Griffiths
- International Gaming Research Unit
- mark.griffiths_at_ntu.ac.uk
2THE STUDY IN CONTEXT (1988-1990)
- Exploratory observational/semi-structured
interview study of eight adolescent fruit machine
gamblers (Griffiths, 1990a - JGS) - Semi-structured interview study of 50 adolescent
fruit machine gamblers (Griffiths, 1990b - JGS
1990c - JGS) - Case studies of adolescent fruit machine gamblers
(Griffiths, 1991- BJA 1993 - JGS) - Longitudinal observational study of adolescent
gamblers in amusement arcades (Griffiths, 1991-
JCASP) - Postal study of Parent of Young Gamblers
members and their adolescent gambling children
(Griffiths, 1993a - JGS) - Experimental study of cognition in fruit machine
gamblers (Griffiths, 1994 - BJP) - Experimental study of arousal in fruit machine
gamblers (Griffiths, 1993b - Add.Behs)
3GLOBAL MODEL OF GAMBLING BEHAVIOUR(Griffiths,
2006 Parke Griffiths, 2007)
4Individual Characteristics(Griffiths
Delfabbro, 2001)
5Situational Characteristics(Griffiths Parke,
2003)Example UK Amusement Arcade
6Structural characteristics(Griffiths, 19931995
Parke Griffiths, 2001 2007)Example Slot
machines
7COGNITIVE BIAS IN GAMBLING(Wagenaar, 1988)
- Gamblers are motivated by a way of reasoning,
not by defects of personality, education or
social environment - Gamblers gamble not because they have a bigger
repertoire of heuristics but because they select
heuristics at the wrong occasions
8STUDYS MAIN HYPOTHESES
- Hypothesis 1
- There would be significant differences in the
thought processes (irrational verbalisations)
between regular and non-regular gamblers - Hypothesis 2
- There would be no significant differences in the
(skill-based) behaviours of regular and
non-regular gamblers
9METHOD
- Quasi-experiment
- Two groups of participants
- IV regular or non-regular gambler
10PARTICIPANTS
- 30 regular gamblers
- 30 non-regular gamblers
- Regular (29 males 1 female play at least once
week) - Non-regular (15 males 15 females play once
month or less) - Volunteer Sample
- Mainly recruited via a poster
11THE SUBJECTIVE DVs
- (1) COGNITIVE ACTIVITY
- Measured by thinking aloud
- (2) PERCEPTION OF SKILL
- Measured by post-experiment semi- structured
interview
12THE OBJECTIVE (BEHAVIOURAL) DVs
- Total number of plays in session
- Total minutes of play in session
- Play rate - Total plays per minute in session
- End stake total winnings
- Total number of wins in session
- Win rate (time) time between wins
- Win rate (plays) number of plays between wins
13PROCEDURE
- In arcade each participant given 3 to gamble on
machine that gave 30 free gambles - Objective To stay on machine for 60 gambles
- To break even and win back the 3
- If they achieved 60 gambles they could choose to
keep the money or carry on gambling
14CONTROLS
- Participants played same machine FRUITSKILL
- Randomly assigned to thinking aloud/non-thinking
aloud - All recordings transcribed within 24 hours
- - Say everything that goes through your mind
- - Do not censor your thoughts
- - Keep talking continuously
- - Dont have to speak in complete sentences
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16MAIN RESULTS (Behavioural variables)
- ANOVAs showed no significant differences on all
variables except - Regular gamblers stayed on the machine slightly
longer (F(1,56) 4.27, p0.044) - Regular gamblers had a significantly higher play
rate (F(1,56) 7.96, p0.007) - Non-regular gamblers who thought aloud had
slightly more wins than any other group (F(1,56)
5.09, p0.028) - Regular gamblers who thought aloud had a
significantly lower win rate than any other group
(F(1,56) 7.85, p0.007)
17MAIN RESULTS (Cognitive variables)
- Content analysis of thinking aloud transcripts
- 31 different categories (4 irrational, 27
rational) - Regular gamblers produced significantly more
irrational verbalisations than non-regular
gamblers (14 vs. 2.5 p lt 0.001) - Further analysis of transcripts revealed gamblers
using a variety of heuristics (e.g., hindsight
bias)
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19IRRATIONAL VERBALISATION
- This fruity is not in a good mood
- It wants its money back
- Putting only a quid in bluffs the machine
- The machine thinks I am a Fwit
- This machine wont pay out happily
20CONCLUSIONS
- Regular gamblers are slightly more skilful (e.g.
knowing the reels and when to nudge) - Regular gamblers believe they are more skilful
than they are - Gamblers know they will lose but they play
with money not for it (staying on the machine is
the objective) - Regular gamblers make more irrational
verbalisations demonstrating cognitive bias
21APPLICATIONS?
- May help to rehabilitate gambling addicts
through cognitive behavioural therapy - Can be used to help problem gamblers change the
way they think (recognise and change their
cognitive bias) and behave - e.g. by playing back their irrational thinking
22EVALUATION
- Both quantitative and qualitative DVs
- Validity the thinking aloud method??
- Reliability of content analysis??
- Biased sample (29 male regular gamblers) - does
this matter?? - Ecological validity (level of realism)
- Generalisability to other forms of gambling
(e.g horse racing, dice, roulette)
23Thankyou! Any questions?