Cognitive biases and decision making in gambling

Heuristics and cognitive biases can occur in reasoning and decision making. Some of them are very common in gamblers (illusion of control, representativeness, availability, etc.). Structural characteristics and functioning of games of chance favor the appearance of these biases. Two experiments were conducted with nonpathological gamblers. The first experiment was a game of dice with wagers. In the second experiment, the participants played two bingo games. Specific rules of the games favored the appearance of cognitive bias (illusion of control) and heuristics (representativeness and availability) and influence on the bets. Results and implications for gambling are discussed.     

Biased evaluations of randomly determined gambling outcomes

We investigated whether people are biased in their evaluations of gambling outcomes even when the outcomes are chance determined. In Experiment 1, subjects exhibited a bias in their evaluations of the outcomes of a computerized bingo game. Manipulating whether the outcome of the first round was determined by a series of anomalous or “fluke” events had a greater impact on the subsequent bets of those who had lost their bets than on those who had won. Losers appeared to use these fluke events to explain away the outcome, whereas winners discounted their significance. Experiment 2 tested the limiting conditions of these findings by manipulating whether or not subjects were induced to perceive an “illusion of control” over the outcomes by allowing some of them to make a series of incidental choices during the contest. Only those subjects in the illusion of control conditions exhibited a bias in their evaluations of the outcome of the first round. The connection between this research and earlier behavioral theories of the psychology of gambling is discussed.     

Skill-set,success outcome,and mania as determinants of the illusion of control

The illusion of control, the tendency for individuals to approach chance tasks with skill-appropriate strategies, was studied. Subjects premeasured on a mania scale were classified as either high (HM) or low (LM) in mania. In the first phase of the study, HM and LM subjects performed 30 trials on either a skill (verbal associates) or chance (coin-toss) task and were given either 20, 50, or 80% success feedback. After Task 1 was completed, subjects filled out an attribution questionnaire. In the final phase of the study, subjects anticipated 30 more trials either on a skill or chance task. Subjects' predicted successes were measured. It was hypothesized that predicted successes on anticipated skill and chance tasks would be affected more by outcomes on a previous skill task than by outcomes on a previous chance task. The results for the anticipated skill task directly supported the hypothesis. On the anticipated chance task, the hypothesis was confirmed for HM subjects only. The results are discussed in terms of how previous skill experiences may induce a set to control ungovernable situations for individuals with manic reactions.     

The illusion of courage in self‐predictions: Mispredicting one's own behavior in embarrassing situations

People exhibit an “illusion of courage” when predicting their own behavior in embarrassing situations. In three experiments, participants overestimated their own willingness to engage in embarrassing public performances in exchange for money when those performances were psychologically distant: Hypothetical or in the relatively distant future. This illusion of courage occurs partly because of cold/hot empathy gaps. That is, people in a relatively “cold” unemotional state underestimate the influence on their own preferences and behaviors of being in a relative “hot” emotional state such as social anxiety evoked by an embarrassing situation. Consistent with this cold/hot empathy gap explanation, putting people “in touch” with negative emotional states by arousing fear (Experiments 1 and 2) and anger (Experiment 2) decreased people's willingness to engage in psychologically distant embarrassing public performances. Conversely, putting people “out of touch” with social anxiety through aerobic exercise, which reduces state anxiety and increases confidence, increased people's willingness to engage in psychologically distance embarrassing public performances (Experiment 3). Implications for self‐predictions, self‐evaluation, and affective forecasting are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cance and luck are not the same

In the mind of many people chance and luck act as real but different causes of events. Even in strictly defined situations as casino gambling, people may perceive influences of luck that help to overcome the negative expectancy defined by the rules of chance. Interviews with gamblers in casinos confirmed this idea. In two experiments it was established that the distinction between chance and luck are also made by ordinary subjects in everyday situations. The results revealed that chance is perceived to operate when an event is surprising, an unexpected coincidence. Luck is perceived when an event implies the escape from negative consequences, or the achievement of something that is important and difficult. The distinction between chance and luck can explain why people are trapped by the illusion of control, even when it is clear that they have no influence on the physical causation determining the outcomes of events. They cannot change the outcome of the roulette wheel, but they can employ their luck, which helps them to place their bets on the winning number.     

Visual illusions and direct perception: Elaborating on Gibson's insights

Gibson argued that illusory pictorial displays contain “inadequate” information (1966, p. 288) but also that a “very special kind of selective attention” (p. 313) can dispel the illusion–suggesting that adequate perceptual information could in fact be potentially available to observers. The present paper describes Gibson's treatment of geometrical illusions and reviews pertinent empirical evidence. Interestingly, Gibson's insights have been corroborated by recent findings of inter- and intra-observer variability in susceptibility to visual illusions as a function of culture, learning and task. It is argued that these findings require a modification of the general Gibsonian principle of perception as the detection of specifying information. Withagen and Chemero's (2009) evolutionary motivated reconceptualization of perception predicts observers' use of both specifying and non-specifying information and inter- and intra-observer variability therein. Based on this reconceptualization we develop an ecological approach to visual illusions that explains differential illusion effects in terms of the optical variable(s) detected.     

Changes in frontal and posterior cortical activity underlie the early emergence of executive function

Executive function (EF) is a key cognitive process that emerges in early childhood and facilitates children's ability to control their own behavior. Individual differences in EF skills early in life are predictive of quality‐of‐life outcomes 30 years later (Moffitt et al., 2011). What changes in the brain give rise to this critical cognitive ability? Traditionally, frontal cortex growth is thought to underlie changes in cognitive control (Bunge & Zelazo, 2006; Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2009). However, more recent data highlight the importance of long‐range cortical interactions between frontal and posterior brain regions. Here, we test the hypothesis that developmental changes in EF skills reflect changes in how posterior and frontal brain regions work together. Results show that children who fail a “hard” version of an EF task and who are thought to have an immature frontal cortex, show robust frontal activity in an “easy” version of the task. We show how this effect can arise via posterior brain regions that provide on‐the‐job training for the frontal cortex, effectively teaching the frontal cortex adaptive patterns of brain activity on “easy” EF tasks. In this case, frontal cortex activation can be seen as both the cause and the consequence of rule switching. Results also show that older children have differential posterior cortical activation on “easy” and “hard” tasks that reflects continued refinement of brain networks even in skilled children. These data set the stage for new training programs to foster the development of EF skills in at‐risk children.     

Strategies to motivate helpless and mastery-oriented children: The effect of gender-based expectancies

Five studies examined potential determinants of gender differences in helplessness by investigating two major steps in the expectancy confirmation process. The first step, i.e., an examination of gender-based expectancies, was addressed in three studies in which subjects (parents and college students) read vignettes that included either masculine or feminine sex-linked tasks performed by helpless and mastery-oriented children. We hypothesized that across tasks subjects would consider a “helpless” approach toward achievement as stereotypic of girls and “mastery-oriented” behavior as stereotypic of boys. The next step of the expectancy confirmation process, and central question addressed here, centered on the proposed differential treatment prescribed for children who performed inadequately on an academic activity, depending on whether these children's behaviors were consistent or inconsistent with stereotypic expectations. The pattern of data obtained generally supported hypotheses that (1) under conditions in which children's behavior confirmed expectancies, i.e., girls acting helpless and boys showing mastery-oriented behaviors, supportive responses would be prescribed, whereas (2) when children's behavior violated expectancies, i.e., girls acting in a mastery-oriented manner and boys acting in a helpless manner, more controlling techniques would be used. These findings are discussed in terms of consequences of use of these different strategies to remedy helpless behaviors in children.     

The Opposites Task: Using General Rules to Test Cognitive Flexibility in Preschoolers

Executive functions play an important role in cognitive development, and during the preschool years especially, children's performance is limited in tasks that demand flexibility in their behavior. We asked whether preschoolers would exhibit limitations when they are required to apply a general rule in the context of novel stimuli on every trial (the “opposites” task). Two types of inhibitory processing were measured: response interference (resistance to interference from a competing response) and proactive interference (resistance to interference from a previously relevant rule). Group data show 3-year-olds have difficulty inhibiting prepotent tendencies under these conditions, whereas 5-year-olds’ accuracy is near ceiling in the task.     

Reversal of the preference reversal phenomenon

The widely replicated preference reversal phenomenon (PRP) violates most theories of decision under risk. People exhibiting PRP choose a safe bet (with a large chance of a small gain) over a long shot (with a small chance of a larger gain). But, when bidding to buy or sell each bet, they bid more for the long shot. Surprisingly, in Experiment 1, a new opposite reversal pattern (NPRP) was found: Safe bets typically received larger bids than long shots and reversals were far more frequent when the long shot was chosen. In Experiment 2, NPRP was found for $100 expected value bets, but PRP occurred for bets with $3 expected values. The task characteristics apparently necessary to produce NPRP are (1) bids in the form of maximum buying prices, (2) possibility of loss in bidding, but not in choice, and (3) large payoffs. It is argued that wealth effects predicted by expected utility theory are too small to explain NPRP. Instead, it is hypothesized that a contingent decision process underlies the shift in reveral patterns and that aspiration levels exert increased influence in bidding to buy when payoffs are large.     

Assessing Young Children's Number Magnitude Representation: A Comparison Between Novel and Conventional Tasks

Previously, researchers have relied on asking young children to plot a given number on a 0-to-10 number line to assess their mental representation of numbers 1 to 9. However, such a (“conventional”) number-to-position (N-P) task may underestimate the accuracy of young children's magnitude estimates and misrepresent the nature of their number representation. The purpose of this study was to compare young children's performance on the conventional N-P task and a “modified” N-P task that is more consistent with a discrete-quantity view of number and with measures of theoretically related mathematical competencies. Participants (n = 45), ranging in age from 4;0 to 6;0, were administered both versions of the N-P task twice during 4 sessions in 1 of 2 randomly assigned and counterbalanced orders. Between and within conditions, children were significantly more accurate on the modified version than on the conventional task. The results indicate that the conventional task, in particular, may be confusing and that several simple modifications can make it more understandable for young children. However, when performance on theoretically related number tasks is taken into account, both the conventional and the modified N-P tasks appeared to underestimate competence.     

On bad mood and white bears: The effects of mood state on ability to suppress unwanted thoughts

Does temporary mood influence people's ability to engage in effective thought suppression? Based on past research on mental control and recent work on affective influences on social cognition, this experiment predicted and found that negative mood improved and positive mood impaired people's ability to suppress their thoughts when instructed not to think of a neutral concept, white bears. We also found clear evidence for ironic rebound effects: on a subsequent generative task, intrusions of the suppressed thought were greater in the negative than in the positive mood group. Participants received positive or negative feedback about performance on a supposed creativity task to induce positive or negative moods, and then engaged in two consecutive generative writing tasks, the first accompanied by instructions to suppress thoughts of white bears. Those in a negative group reported fewer “white bear” intrusions when attempting to suppress, but more “white bear” intrusions (an ironic rebound effect) in the subsequent task when the suppression instruction was lifted. The implications of these results for everyday tasks of mental control, and for recent affect–cognition theories are discussed.     

Can We Forget What We Know in a False‐Belief Task? An Investigation of the True‐Belief Default

It has been generally assumed in the Theory of Mind literature of the past 30 years that young children fail standard false‐belief tasks because they attribute their own knowledge to the protagonist (what Leslie and colleagues called a “true‐belief default”). Contrary to the traditional view, we have recently proposed that the children's bias is task induced. This alternative view was supported by studies showing that 3 year olds are able to pass a false‐belief task that allows them to focus on the protagonist, without drawing their attention to the target object in the test phase. For a more accurate comparison of these two accounts, the present study tested the true‐belief default with adults. Four experiments measuring eye movements and response inhibition revealed that (a) adults do not have an automatic tendency to respond to the false‐belief question according to their own knowledge and (b) the true‐belief response need not be inhibited in order to correctly predict the protagonist's actions. The positive results observed in the control conditions confirm the accuracy of the various measures used. I conclude that the results of this study undermine the true‐belief default view and those models that posit mechanisms of response inhibition in false‐belief reasoning. Alternatively, the present study with adults and recent studies with children suggest that participants' focus of attention in false‐belief tasks may be key to their performance.     

The accessibility of the term “contempt” and the meaning of the unilateral lip curl

Four studies are reported investigating the conditions under which various proposed facial expressions of contempt are labelled “contempt”. Only under forced-choice conditions are any of these expressions labelled “contempt” above chance; free responses are at or below chance. Contrary to predictions from Rosenberg and Ekman's (1995) explanation of poor free-response performance, participants demonstrating the best understanding of “contempt”, and those primed by prior tasks to have the concept readily accessible did not do better than other subjects. Using the forced-choice paradigm, supposedly neutral expressions were labelled “contempt” by 70% of respondents. It is concluded that poor performance in free-response studies is not due to inaccessibility or unfamiliarity of “contempt”, that the unilateral lip curl included in the JACFEE set of expressions of basic emotions (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988) is not decoded as contempt, and that good performance in forced-choice studies results from artifacts of the method.     

“You throw like a girl:” The effect of stereotype threat on women's athletic performance and gender stereotypes

Objectives“Stereotype threat” occurs when people perform worse at a task due to the pressure of a negative stereotype of their group's performance. We examined whether female athletes may underperform at an athletic task if prompted to think about gender stereotypes of athleticism. We also explored whether gender stereotypes regarding general athletic ability would be affected by a standard stereotype threat induction.DesignWe used a 2 (participant gender) × 2 (stereotype threat manipulation) factorial design with task performance and gender stereotypes of athleticism as dependent measures.MethodFemale and male tennis and basketball college student athletes performed two athletic tasks relevant to their sport: a difficult concentration task and an easier speed task. Participants were told beforehand that (1) there was a gender difference on the tasks (to induce stereotype threat) or (2) there was no gender difference (to remove any preexisting stereotype threat).ResultsOn the difficult task, women performed worse than men only when stereotype threat was induced. Performance on the easier speed task was unaffected by the stereotype information. Interestingly, women's beliefs regarding women's and men's general athleticism were also affected by the manipulation.ConclusionsWe concluded that one minor comment regarding a very specific athletic task may sometimes impair task performance and alter gender stereotypes of athleticism among women. Some implications for preventing negative stereotype threat effects are discussed.     

Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.     

Interaction of Perception and Action in Discrete and Continuous Rapid Aiming Tasks

Previously, we have shown that discrete and continuous rapid aiming tasks are governed by distinct visuomotor control mechanisms by assessing the combined visual illusion effects on the perceived and effective index of difficulty (ID). All participants were perceptually biased by the combined visual illusion before they performed the rapid aiming tasks. In the current study, the authors manipulated the order of performing perceptual and motor tasks to examine whether perceptual or motor experience with the illusory visual target would influence the subsequent perceived and effective ID in discrete and continuous tapping tasks. The results supported our hypothesis showing that perceptual experience with the illusory visual target in the discrete condition reduced the effective ID in the subsequent discrete tapping task, and motor experience with the illusory visual target in the continuous condition reduced the illusion effects on the perceived ID in the subsequent perceptual judgment task. The study demonstrates the coinfluence of perception and action, and suggests that perception and action influence one another with different magnitude depending on the spatial frame of reference used to perform the perceptuomotor task.     

Conflicting desire and the child's theory of mind

We contrast the standard representational theory-of-mind approach to the understanding of mental states with an alternative view that theory-of-mind tasks require executive functioning or the inhibition of more “cognitively salient” information. Two experiments test the hypothesis that 3-year-olds' apparent problems on theory-of-mind tasks are not due to an inability to represent the mental contents of another, but rather lie in the informational structure of the task. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on their understanding of desire in others either when they themselves held a strong and conflicting desire or when they had no strong desire. Results showed that under the condition of having a strong and conflicting desire, only 5-year-olds were able to recognize that another person may desire something different. In contrast, when the children themselves held no strong desire, even 3-year-olds were able to judge another's desire correctly. Experiment 2 compared 3-year-olds' performance on a standard false-belief task with an equivalently structured desire task in which participants had again to inhibit their own strong and conflicting desire. Results showed similar performance on the traditional false-belief task and the new conflicting-desire task.     

The effect of working memory load on semantic illusions: What the phonological loop and central executive have to contribute

When asked how many animals of each kind Moses took on the Ark, most people respond with “two” despite the substituted name (Moses for Noah) in the question. Possible explanations for semantic illusions appear to be related to processing limitations such as those of working memory. Indeed, individual working memory capacity has an impact upon how sentences containing substitutions are processed. This experiment examined further the role of working memory in the occurrence of semantic illusions using a dual-task working memory load approach. Participants verified statements while engaging in either articulatory suppression or random number generation. Secondary task type had a significant effect on semantic illusion rate, but only when comparing the control condition to the two dual-task conditions. Furthermore, secondary task performance in the random number generation condition declined, suggesting a tradeoff between tasks. Response time analyses also showed a different pattern of processing across the conditions. The findings suggest that the phonological loop plays a role in representing semantic illusion sentences coherently and in monitoring for details, while the role of the central executive is to assist gist-processing of sentences. This usually efficient strategy leads to error in the case of semantic illusions.     

The Effect on Behavior of Being in a Control Group

This study examined how individuals react when they know they are missing an experimental treatment as a function of having been assigned to a control group. Subjects in one condition were informed that they were a control group and would miss receiving extra money for doing well on experimental tasks. Subjects in a second condition were informed that they would miss receiving electric shocks for doing poorly on the same tasks. In the third condition subjects were given no information about missed conditions. Subjects who believed they were missing the chance to receive extra money tended to do worse, while those who believed they were missing the shocks did better on the experimental tasks than did subjects unaware of any other condition. In addition, missing-reward subjects made more errors and did less work than did missing-punishment subjects. There were no differences in attitude towards the experiment as a function of experimental condition. Differences in task performance were discussed in terms of inequity theory (Adams, 1963), the evaluation of social programs, and Campbell's (Note 1) suggestion of "informed randomization.