THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE BIAS AND SKILL IN FRUIT MACHINE GAMBLING

Although a single theory of the cognitive psychology of gambling is un likely to fully explain persistent gambling, a number of recent studie s have shown that there may be a strong cognitive bias involved in gam bling behaviour. In this study a number of factors and variables relat ing to the cognitive psychology of fruit machine players were examined in 60 subjects (30 regular and 30 non-regular gamblers) in a British amusement arcade. This involved the use of the 'thinking aloud method' and an examination of the role of skill using both objective (behavio ural) and subjective (self-report) measures. Results showed that regul ar gamblers produced significantly more irrational verbalizations than non-regular gamblers, and that on subjective measures regular gambler s were significantly more skill oriented. Results of the objective mea sures demonstrated that with the same amount of money regular gamblers can gamble more times than non-regular gamblers but this was not sign ificant. The implications of these results are discussed and suggestio ns are made about the application of the results to the treatment of p athological gambling.