The role of cognitive bias and skill in fruit machine gambling

Although a single theory of the cognitive psychology of gambling is unlikely to fully explain persistent gambling, a number of recent studies have shown that there may be a strong cognitive bias involved in gambling behaviour. In this study a number of factors and variables relating 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 (behavioural) and subjective (self‐report) measures. Results showed that regular gamblers produced significantly more irrational verbalizations than non‐regular gamblers, and that on subjective measures regular gamblers were significantly more skill oriented. Results of the objective measures demonstrated that with the same amount of money regular gamblers can gamble more times than non‐regular gamblers but this was not significant. The implications of these results are discussed and suggestions are made about the application of the results to the treatment of pathological gambling.