An effect of inter-trial duration on the gambler's fallacy choice bias

Militana, Erika; Wolfson, Elissa; Cleaveland, J. Mark

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2010.02.010

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Consistently, the GF is associated with strong LPFC activation [4], [10]. Also in accordance with this view, it has been found that subjects engaged more GF when the inter-trial interval was increased, thus allowing more time and cognitive resources to implement the strategy [37].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

The Gambler’s Fallacy Is Associated with Weak Affective Decision Making but Strong Cognitive Ability

Xue

Lei

et al. 2012

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans demonstrate an inherent bias towards making maladaptive decisions, as shown by a phenomenon known as the gambler’s fallacy (GF). The GF has been traditionally considered as a heuristic bias supported by the fast and automatic intuition system, which can be overcome by the reasoning system. The present study examined an intriguing hypothesis, based on emerging evidence from neuroscience research, that the GF might be attributed to a weak affective but strong cognitive decision making mechanism. With data from a large sample of college students, we found that individuals’ use of the GF strategy was positively correlated with their general intelligence and executive function, such as working memory and conflict resolution, but negatively correlated with their affective decision making capacities, as measured by the Iowa Gambling Task. Our result provides a novel insight into the mechanisms underlying the GF, which highlights the significant role of affective mechanisms in adaptive decision-making.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

The Gambler’s Fallacy Is Associated with Weak Affective Decision Making but Strong Cognitive Ability

Xue

Lei

et al. 2012

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The LPFC is also involved in expressing the new behavior under the prolonged interference of the old behavior (30). This is also consistent with recent behavioral data showing that a longer intertrial interval (6 s vs. 2 s) increased the use of the GF strategy, contradicting the traditional heuristic account (31). This result could not be attributed to short-term memory or pattern detection, because they were matched in our experiments independent of the strategy (WSLS vs. GF) subjects used.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Although the effect was not significantly diminished at streaks 5 and 6, the smaller effect could be a result of the ceiling effect and measurement errors caused by smaller number of observations under longer streaks. Presumably, the tDCS effect could be stronger under other conditions when subjects are less likely to use the GF strategy, such as under short intertrial intervals (31). This remains to be examined in future studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lateral prefrontal cortex contributes to maladaptive decisions

Xue

Juan

Chang

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans consistently make suboptimal decisions involving random events, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. Using functional MRI and a matching pennies game that captured subjects' increasing tendency to predict the break of a streak as it continued [i.e., the "gambler's fallacy" (GF)], we found that a strong blood oxygen level-dependent response in the left lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) to the current outcome preceded the use of the GF strategy 10 s later. Furthermore, anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left LPFC, which enhances neuronal firing rates and cerebral excitability, increased the use of the GF strategy, and made the decisions more "sticky." These results reveal a causal role of the LPFC in implementing suboptimal decision strategy guided by false world models, especially when such strategy requires great resources for cognitive control.decision-making | brain stimulation | random process T he ability to perceive patterns and to use them to guide decisions is an important aspect of human cognition. During the long history of evolution, the human brain has been well adapted to the statistical regularities in the environment (1, 2). Nevertheless, humans have been consistently shown to be bad at making decisions involving "independently and identically distributed" random events generated by the Bernoulli process, exhibiting suboptimal behaviors such as probability matching and the "gambler's fallacy" (GF) (3-5). In particular, the GF is an increasing tendency to predict the break of a streak generated by a random process (e.g., flipping a fair coin) when the streak gets longer (6), and has been observed in many laboratory and reallife situations (6-9).Behavioral research has suggested that the GF is a cognitive bias generated by a false perception of the random process (e.g., the small number law) (6, 10), which is probably formed through years of evolution in response to the pattern-rich world (1, 2). Consistently, the subjective beliefs about the specific generating mechanisms (i.e., the world model) could significantly affect participants' predictions (6-9). Computational models show that a rational mind guided by a false "world model" (i.e., outcome dependency) could well generate this type of suboptimal decisions, which can be changed by alternations of the world model (11). Nevertheless, the neural mechanisms of the GF have not been clearly addressed.Several lines of research have suggested the involvement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in several decision processes that could contribute to the GF strategy. First, the PFC is good at detecting and constructing patterns, especially out of randomness (12). Second, the PFC plays an important role in decision making by encoding a particular state of the environment and the desirability of the outcome expected from such a state (13,14). During the pennies-matching gamble, PFC neurons have been shown to encode multiple types of information related to decision making (including animals' past decisions, payoffs, and ...

show abstract

“…In addition, further evidence of cognitive biases also suggests that the gambler's fallacy occurs in situations in which information is experienced sequentially over time (Barron and Leider 2010). For instance, Militana et al (2010) found that the bias was stronger when research subjects had longer time intervals between choices. In contrast, the gambler's fallacy decreased when people's inaccurate assessments of the probability of an outcome imposed costs (Terrell 1994).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgment Error in Lottery Play: When the Hot Hand Meets the Gambler’s Fallacy

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We demonstrate that lottery markets can exhibit the "hot-hand" phenomenon, in which past winning numbers tend to have a greater share of the betting proportion in future draws even though past and future events are independent. This is surprising as previous works have instead documented the presence of an opposite effect, the "gambler's fallacy" in the U.S. lottery market. The current literature also suggests that the gambler's fallacy prevails when random numbers are generated by mechanical devices, such as in lottery games. We use two sets of naturally occurring data to show that both the gambler's fallacy and the hot-hand fallacy can exist in different types of lottery games. We then run online experimental studies that mimic lottery games with one, two, or three winning numbers. Our experimental results show that the number of winning prizes impacts behavior. In particular, whereas a single-prize game leads to a strong presence of the gambler's fallacy, we observe a significant increase in hot-hand behavior in multipleprize games with two or three winning numbers.

show abstract

An effect of inter-trial duration on the gambler's fallacy choice bias

Cited by 14 publications

References 19 publications

The Gambler’s Fallacy Is Associated with Weak Affective Decision Making but Strong Cognitive Ability

The Gambler’s Fallacy Is Associated with Weak Affective Decision Making but Strong Cognitive Ability

Lateral prefrontal cortex contributes to maladaptive decisions

Judgment Error in Lottery Play: When the Hot Hand Meets the Gambler’s Fallacy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About