The psychology of gambling University of Cambridge

In severe addiction, people also go through withdrawal—they feel physically ill, cannot sleep and shake uncontrollably—if their brain is deprived of a dopamine-stimulating substance for too long. At the same time, neural pathways connecting the reward circuit to the prefrontal cortex weaken. Resting just above and behind the eyes, the prefrontal cortex helps people tame impulses.

Up to 5% of adolescents and young adults who gamble develop a disorder. And men outnumber women at a ratio of about 2 to 1 among people with gambling addictions, although there animal quest are a growing number of women with the disorder. Following damage to the orbitofrontal region, neurosurgical patients often show changes in their judgment and risk-taking.

• The prototypical casino game—the ‘one armed bandit’ slot machine—is an emblematic example of human factors engineering.
• Under-aged gambling is particularly common and of concern, with around 60 per cent of young people (13-17 years) reporting gambling at least once per year (Lambos et al., 2007).
• This may include betting the opposite way of recent outcomes, attempting to predict patterns in random numbers or performing ritualistic behavior before placing a bet.
• If we take the Freudian view, we come away thinking that pathological gambling parallels a subconscious desire to self-castrate.
• It can create a sense of independence and can be extremely empowering for some people.
• Gambling participation rates vary significantly according to age and gender.

Although there has been improvement in the evidence base, no psychological treatment satisfies the current standards for evidence of efficacy. Cognitive behavioural therapies have been cautiously recommended as ‘best practice’ for the psychological treatment of problem gambling (Westphal, 2008). Importantly, however, recent longitudinal epidemiologic studies of nontreatment seeking adults suggest that the clinical course of problem gambling may involve spontaneous remissions and natural recovery without formal intervention (Slutske, 2006). There are gaps in the knowledge base about gender and age differences in respect to gambling motivations. Other studies have found no significant gender differences for either commencing or continuing gambling (e.g., Clark et al., 2007).

Accessibility

Counterintuitively, in individuals with a gambling problem, losing money comes to trigger the rewarding release of dopamine almost to the same degree that winning does. As a result, in problem gamblers, losing sets off the urge to keep playing, rather than the disappointment that might prompt you to walk away, a phenomenon known as chasing losses. Studies have shown that the release of dopamine during gambling occurs in brain areas similar to those activated by taking drugs of abuse. In fact, similar to drugs, repeated exposure to gambling and uncertainty produces lasting changes in the human brain.

Prospect theory (PT) remains the most influential of these accounts because of its ability to describe a range of common behaviors and deviations from normative expected value theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). A central feature of PT is “loss aversion,” referring to the empirical observation that humans (and other species) are more sensitive to losses than to gains. For example, subjects typically reject mixed gambles that offer a 50–50 chance of winning or losing a given amount of money. Loss aversion may be underpinned by value computations in the ventral striatum and amygdala (Tom et al., 2007; De Martino et al., 2010) and has been shown to be modulated by thalamic norepinephrine (Takahashi et al., 2013).

Community and public health approaches to reducing gambling harm

Men are typically more likely than women to gamble on sports, casino card games and racing, whereas few sex differences in participation tend to be observed in relation to gaming machines and lotteries (Productivity Commission, 2009). Among other emerging insights, people with gambling problems also have smaller volumes in their amygdala and hippocampus, two regions related to emotional learning and stress regulation. Brain research might help explain why teenagers are particularly susceptible to gambling, Potenza said, including the observation that different parts of the brain mature at different rates in ways that predispose teenagers to gambling and other risk-taking behaviors. The prefrontal cortex, which regulates impulsivity and decision-making, is particularly late to develop, especially in boys. Studies have linked gambling disorders to variations in a variety of brain regions, particularly the striatum and prefrontal cortex, which are involved in reward processing, social and emotional problems, stress, and more.

Though he had a negligible understanding of odds, he did keep a notebook record of his losses, though I suspect his recorded losses wiggled from time to time. Barney will come out okay; he gambles for fun and seems to be careful with his accounts. He lost two houses and still believed that with some luck he once had, he could win again.

Risky business

Women who develop gambling disorders are more likely than men to also have depression, bipolar, and anxiety disorders. Near-misses are more arousing than losses – despite being more frustrating and significantly less pleasant than missing by a longshot. But crucially, almost winning triggers a more substantial urge to play than even winning itself. Near-misses seem to be highly motivating and increase player commitment to a game, resulting in individuals playing longer than they intended. The size of the dopamine response to a near-miss in fact correlates with the severity of an individual’s gambling addiction. To call gambling a “game of chance” evokes fun, random luck and a sense of collective engagement.

Controlled gambling interventions

It may remain easy for them to simply walk away when the chips run out. Gamblers are often mistaken that past outcomes/results will affect future events, but this isn’t the case. Freud had long ago noted that in constructing the group project of civilization, we give up some measure of raw, selfish, sensual gratification. A part of us is frustrated by the need to always modulate our passions; dress them up in socially accepted narratives; force them into considerate channels of expression; wait patiently and ask nicely.

Indigenous Australians are more likely to experience gambling problems than non-Indigenous people (Young et al., 2007). Once confined mostly to casinos concentrated in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, gambling has expanded to include ready access to lotteries and online games and video games with gambling elements for adults and children. If a roulette player sees seven black numbers come up in a row, they will then put their money on red. This is a well-known psychological process that is called the gambler’s fallacy.

Gamblers Anonymous

A follow-up experiment applied anodal transcranial direct current stimulation, a procedure known to enhance cortical excitability and cerebral perfusion (Stagg et al., 2013), over the same region. Corroborating the fMRI data, stimulation to left LPFC increased the use of the gambler’s fallacy (Xue et al., 2012b) and point to a causal role of this region in implementing this suboptimal decision strategy, guided by false world models. Education before people try gambling would help, Derevensky said, and plenty of prevention programs exist, including interactive video games designed by his group. Teachers are not monitoring lunch tables for gambling activity, Nower said. Derevensky recommends that parents talk with kids about loot boxes and other gambling games and explain the powerful psychological phenomena that make them appealing.

A foundational law in learning theory—the law of effect—in essence contends that a behavior that is rewarded will be repeated. Yet how we follow the reward will depend on how the reward is presented. The slot machine rewards you on what psychologists call a ‘variable ratio’ schedule, which means that you get rewarded after an unpredictable number of responses (in this case, lever pulls or button presses). Unlike a ‘fixed ratio’ schedule, which rewards you every set number of responses, the variable ratio schedule is uniquely resistant to extinction, which means that a behavior rewarded in this way is difficult to stop.

This anticipation effect might explain why dopamine release parallels an individual’s levels of gambling “high” and the severity of his or her gambling addiction. It likely also plays a role in reinforcing the risk-taking behavior seen in gambling. Dozens of studies confirm that another effective treatment for addiction is cognitive-behavior therapy, which teaches people to resist unwanted thoughts and habits. Gambling addicts may, for example, learn to confront irrational beliefs, namely the notion that a string of losses or a near miss—such as two out of three cherries on a slot machine—signals an imminent win. Continuous use of such drugs robs them of their power to induce euphoria. Addictive substances keep the brain so awash in dopamine that it eventually adapts by producing less of the molecule and becoming less responsive to its effects. As a consequence, addicts build up a tolerance to a drug, needing larger and larger amounts to get high.