Pathological gamblers are more vulnerable to the illusion of control in a standard associative learning task

Abstract

An illusion of control is said to occur when a person believes that he or she controls an outcome that is uncontrollable. Pathological gambling has often been related to an illusion of control, but the assessment of the illusion has generally used introspective methods in domain-specific (i.e., gambling) situations. The illusion of control of pathological gamblers, however, could be a more general problem, affecting other aspects of their daily life. Thus, we tested them using a standard associative learning task which is known to produce illusions of control in most people under certain conditions. The results showed that the illusion was significantly stronger in pathological gamblers than in a control undiagnosed sample. This suggests (1) that the experimental tasks used in basic associative learning research could be used to detect illusions of control in gamblers in a more indirect way, as compared to introspective and domain-specific questionnaires; and (2), that in addition to gambling-specific problems, pathological gamblers may have a higher-than-normal illusion of control in their daily life.

Criteria for conceptualizing behavioural addiction should be informed by the underlying behavioural mechanism

“…For example, money is a clear external reinforcer that results in a conditioned instrumental response; namely, gambling. In the problem gambler the response to the conditioned stimulus is different to that seen in recreational gamblers [5]. Nevertheless, we suggest that this is best understood using a common underlying psychological mechanism, but that the difference between the problem and the recreational gambler may be one of a parameter shift governing the associative strength between the behaviour and its reward, or the valuation of the reward.…”

Controlling the illusion of control: a grounded theory of sports betting advertising in the UK

“…Orgaz et al (2013) previously found results that indicated a stronger illusion of control among individuals with GD. In this regard, Cowley and colleagues (2015) noted that people that felt their illusion of control was threatened by a bet lost were more likely to construct their retrospective evaluation of their gambling activity by giving a disproportionate importance to those bets in which they won, whereas participants with low illusory control beliefs (or those who have won) were more likely to re-tell their own gambling story considering the final outcome as baseline for the evaluation.…”

Gambling on Smartphones: A Study of a Potentially Addictive Behaviour in a Naturalistic Setting

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