Cognitive Bias
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 17.1.5
Explaining Gambling Addiction Through Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are distortions in thinking that cause a person to have a warped perspective on reality. These distortions in thinking can be used to explain gambling addiction.
Cognitive biases
- Mental errors, distortions in thinking and deviations from normal thinking patterns are all forms of cognitive biases.
- These result in a person having a warped view of reality and causes a person to make faulty judgements and decisions.
- People tend to simplify things to a few rules of thumb and make bad decisions as a result.
Awareness
- Think of cognitive distortions like optical illusions: you know that the optical illusion is there, but sometimes you cannot see past it.
- This is the same with cognitive distortions: some people know that they have them, but they have difficulty in overcoming them.
Gambling
- Gamblers can have cognitive distortions.
- A common one would be that they believe the probability of future events is based on past events.
- For example, a craps player rolling a dice believes that because they have not rolled any 6s, they will roll a 6 in the next few rolls.
Wagenaar (1988)
In 1988, Wagenaar outlined 16 rules that the majority of gamblers used when they made decisions. Six of them are described here.
Illusion of control
- Gamblers believe that they have more skill than the normal person, even in games of chance.
- For example, they believe in a craps game when they personally roll the dice a certain way, they are more likely to win.
- This creates unnaturally high expectations of winning.
Gambler’s fallacy
- Every gambler will go through a losing streak, but they believe that the losing streak will come to an end.
- Even if the losing streak is long, they believe then that it is more likely to come to an end.
- A famous example happened in Monte Carlo Casino in 1913.
- In a game of roulette, the ball landed on black 26 times in a row.
- Players lost huge sums of money betting against black because they believed a red streak should follow.
Sunk cost bias
- Gamblers spend an inordinate amount of money on gambling, known as ‘sinking money’ into gambling.
- So because they have sunk a lot of much money, they want to keep gambling to win and get a return on their investment.
Representative bias
- Gamblers tend to think that random events, like the tossing of a coin or rolling of a dice, should look random.
- For example, flipping a coin and landing on heads should then lead to a higher chance of a streak of tails.
Illusory correlations
- Most gamblers have superstitious acts that give them an illusion between the act and winning.
- For example, holding the dice in their right hand and never the left. Or blowing on the dice to roll an eight.
Fixation on absolute frequency of successes
- Gamblers, obviously, gamble a lot. So they will win more than people who do not gamble.
- Gambler’s tend to focus on the absolute number of wins (‘I won 10 times’) rather than the percentage of wins (they won 10 times out of 100, 10%).
Test yourself on Cognitive Bias
What is NOT an example of cognitive bias?
What is something cognitive biases do NOT lead to?
Which group of addicts are most likely to suffer from cognitive distortions?
What did Wagenaar call it when gamblers believe that they have more skill than the normal person, even in games of chance?
Which rule applies when gamblers believe a losing streak must come to an end, especially if it is a long one?