News
International Study on Internet Gambling
31 August 2010
Belinda Davey, a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, is looking at a dual-process approach to understanding harmful gambling. Her second study is a brief internet questionnaire with people who gamble. This study is open to people world-wide.
The URL does not contain any reference to gambling (in order to protect the confidentiality of participants); and, no identifying information is collected from participants at all.
Study background
This study is examining the proposal that problem gambling is consistent with a “dual-process” model of cognition. This model argues that psychological functioning is the product of two independent systems: the “deliberative” system, which is unique to humans, and is conscious (explicit), deliberate, rational, and future-oriented; and the “affective system”, which is shared with many animals, and is sub-conscious (implicit), automatic, emotional, and present-oriented. The two systems are thought to interact to arrive at a particular choice (Bechara & Damasio, 2005; Hoch & Loewenstein, 1991; Goto & Grant, 2008; Loewenstein et al., 2001).
Research shows that decisions often change over time. One reason for this is the level of emotion present at the time of the decision. When free of an urge to gamble, individuals may be rational, and determine that the best choice is to stop or limit their gambling; here, the deliberative system is dominating. However, exposure to cues and automatic implicit thoughts associated with gambling may result in an urge to gamble. The emotions that accompany an urge may alter gambling decisions so that gambling becomes permitted; here, the affective system is dominating.
This proposition accords with anecdotal evidence of gamblers, many of whom state "in the cold light of day" that they want to stop their behaviour, but, once they experience an urge to gamble, they find themselves unable to resist the urge to begin gambling.
This study will investigate whether the dual-process model applies to gambling decisions. It will assess whether gambling thoughts, beliefs, and decisions change according to the level of urge or emotion present, and according to whether the gambler is "off line" (that is, not gambling or experiencing an urge to do so) or "on line" (that is, during gambling or an urge to gamble).
Procedure
Participants will be recruited on the internet, and via advertisements placed in gambling help venues, and other venues gamblers may attend. If participants are interested, they can go to the web site and read the Plain Language Statement (PLS). If they want to participate, they click a button at the bottom of the PLS to begin the study. Please find below the link to the statement.
Once participants begin the study, they will be randomly placed into one of four groups. Depending on the group to which a participant is allocated, s/he may be asked to return to the web site to complete the questions at a later time. The groups are asked to complete the questions as follows:
Group 1: immediately
Group 2: when experiencing no/mild urge to gamble
Group 3: when experiencing a strong urge to gamble
Group 4: during a (usual) gambling session.
If participants meet the criteria of their group at the time of allocation, they can complete the questions then. If not, they will be asked to return to complete the questions when they do meet the criteria.
Participants will be asked to complete the following questions/tasks (in order):
1. A “free-association” task about how gambling makes them feel,
2. How they feel “right now”, and their current urge to gamble,
3. Some questions about their gambling-related cognitive biases,
4. Some demographics questions, and some questions about their gambling frequency,
5. The Scale of Gambling Choices (Baron, Dickerson & Blaszczynski, 1995), which assesses their level of control over their gambling,
6. Finally, they will complete some questions about their overall expectations of gambling.
The questions should take about 10 minutes to complete.