TY - JOUR
T1 - Problem Gambling ‘Fuelled on the Fly’
AU - Teal, Joseph
AU - Kusev, Petko
AU - Heilman, Renata
AU - Martin, Rose
AU - Passanisi, Alessia
AU - Pace, Ugo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/8/14
Y1 - 2021/8/14
N2 - Problem gambling is a gambling disorder often described as continued gambling in the face of increasing losses. In this article, we explored problem gambling behaviour and its psychological determinants. We considered the assumption of stability in risky preferences, anticipated by both normative and descriptive theories of decision making, as well as recent evidence that risk preferences are in fact ‘constructed on the fly’ during risk elicitation. Accordingly, we argue that problem gambling is a multifaceted disorder, which is ‘fueled on the fly’ by a wide range of contextual and non-contextual influences, including individual differences in personality traits, hormonal and emotional activations. We have proposed that the experience of gambling behaviour in itself is a dynamic experience of events in time series, where gamblers anchor on the most recent event—typically a small loss or rare win. This is a highly adaptive, but erroneous, decision-making mechanism, where anchoring on the most recent event alters the psychological representations of substantial and accumulated loss in the past to a representation of negligible loss. In other words, people feel better while they gamble. We conclude that problem gambling researchers and policy makers will need to employ multifaceted and holistic approaches to understand problem gambling.
AB - Problem gambling is a gambling disorder often described as continued gambling in the face of increasing losses. In this article, we explored problem gambling behaviour and its psychological determinants. We considered the assumption of stability in risky preferences, anticipated by both normative and descriptive theories of decision making, as well as recent evidence that risk preferences are in fact ‘constructed on the fly’ during risk elicitation. Accordingly, we argue that problem gambling is a multifaceted disorder, which is ‘fueled on the fly’ by a wide range of contextual and non-contextual influences, including individual differences in personality traits, hormonal and emotional activations. We have proposed that the experience of gambling behaviour in itself is a dynamic experience of events in time series, where gamblers anchor on the most recent event—typically a small loss or rare win. This is a highly adaptive, but erroneous, decision-making mechanism, where anchoring on the most recent event alters the psychological representations of substantial and accumulated loss in the past to a representation of negligible loss. In other words, people feel better while they gamble. We conclude that problem gambling researchers and policy makers will need to employ multifaceted and holistic approaches to understand problem gambling.
KW - problem gambling
KW - risky decision-making
KW - anchoring on recent events
KW - construction of preferences
KW - dynamic experience of events in time series
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112371381&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijerph18168607
DO - 10.3390/ijerph18168607
M3 - Review article
VL - 18
JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
SN - 1661-7827
IS - 16
M1 - 8607
ER -