Background of the Study
Discuss about the Susceptibility To The Gambling Near-Win Effect.
Gambling is a game of cognitive disproportion of the human brain which can overestimate the chance of winning if any near win situation is achieved. In a study near misses were observed to be the reason for elevated reaction for monetary profits (Sanders, Rehfeldt, Hirst, Dixin, & Dixon, 2016). The present study examines the effect of near wins of the persistence of gaming trials for profit. The help of video lottery terminal was taken to complete the study, where players did not show any association of near wins with increased gambling rates.
The university campus bulletin board was used to advertise the time, date and purpose of the study. The advertisement attracted 110 willing students and the final selection was done after studying their records. The exclusion criterion was applied to prohibit participants with pathological problems. Utmost care was taken to remove participants with gambling experience in Problem Gambling Severity Index and South Oaks Gambling Screen (Cote, Caron, Aubert, Desrochers, & Ladouceur, 2003). Participants, who scored more than 3 in PGSI and SOGS scale, were excluded from the scope of this work. The scholar found 29 such special participants and they were informed about the rejection of their participation with proper justifications. The remaining 81 willing participants were divided into two groups. The first group with 42 participants (males: 31, females: 11) was declared as the control group. The second group was formed with remaining 39 students (males: 23, females: 16), and was used for experimental purpose. Both the groups were provided with 12 near wins for first 48 games whereas experimental group was provided with 25% near win situations after completion of their 48th game. Afterward, 10 participants, 4 from the control group and 6 from experimental group were ruled out from the participant list. These participants concluded their gambling after the first session and did not participate in the experimental setup. The list was reduced to 71 participants with 38 in control group (males: 27, females: 11) and 33 in the experimental group (males: 19, females: 14). The excluded participants did not have any significant effect ( = 0.64, p = 0.42) on the remaining sample. Control group members were aged between age between 18 years to 37 years (median = 26 years) and the experimental group age range was between 18 years to 33 years (median = 23 years). Collected information about the participants revealed that 20% of the total sample members had earlier experience of gambling but their SOGS and PGSI scores were below the acceptable limit (Cote, Caron, Aubert, Desrochers, & Ladouceur, 2003).
Participant Selection Criteria
The participants were provided with a study kit, where the 20-item questionnaire of South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS). The set of questionnaire estimated the problems of gambling behavior for the last year (Lesieur & Blume, 1987). The participants gained knowledge about previous gambling problems from the study kit.
For the purpose of the study, an original video lottery terminal was installed in the laboratory (Cote, Caron, Aubert, Desrochers, & Ladouceur, 2003). After taking signature in the consent form, participants were allowed to join the simulated game environment. The win situation of the lottery terminal was explained to the accomplices (Cote, Caron, Aubert, Desrochers, & Ladouceur, 2003). Control of the software used in the video terminal was taken to generate near win situations for the participants.
The scholar notified the willing members about the screening test via a website and social media. Participants appeared for the online test and their demographical data; answers to screening questions were recorded and preserved in a database. Finally chosen 81 students were requested to join the experimenter in the university laboratory. They were explained about the scope of the experiment, and information about the recording of their facial expressions and behavioral changes was provided. Worried participants were pacified by the scholar and assurance was given about revealing of the purpose of the study at the end of the experiment. This was done to avoid any probable biases. The playing manual was explained where advice was about the steps of the game. A single game in the lottery terminal started with nine options symbols in a 3×3 matrix format, among which any central option was to be chosen. The computer software shuffled the options when the start button was pressed. Each game cost 5 cents (single credit), and initially, 240 credit points were deposited in the machine. Therefore, 12 dollars was provided to all the players to start off with the game. The participants were allowed to play any number of times, and their earned profit was awarded at the end of their game session (Gardner, Cote, Gill, Grant, & Watkinson, 2003).
The setup of the lottery terminal was such that players were able to play and win on the central line only. The entire experiment was divided into two phases. In the first part, all the players were provided with 12 near win situations randomly distributed over 48 games. In the second half, near win situation was not provided to the control group. The experimental group behavior was studied compared to the control group, where near wins were manipulated in 28% of the games for the experimental faction. Suddenly, 10 participants discontinued the game after the first session of the experiment. They were excluded from the interpretation of the entire study. The session ended with the scholar awarding the earned profits to the players in terms of real money. Players were allowed to play a maximum of 240 times including both the sessions. Control of the sidelines of the video terminal was kept inactive using the software preferences, as the game was played on the central line only (Jie, Daxing, & Xin, 2018).
Experimental Procedure
Frequencies of the simulated game trials for both the phases of the game were recorded. The trials in the second session were separately named as “phase2bets”, and the scholar was more interested in the analysis of the trial numbers under the experimental condition in the second half. The number of trials attempted in the second session was taken as the dependent variable in the study. There number of games played by the control group (Mean = 72.35, SD = 44.64) and experimental group (Mean = 65.73, SD = 39.72) were recorded. Both the subsamples were checked for the normality using Shapiro-Wilk test and the control group (s = 0.94, p-value = 0.08) was found to be just not normally distributed due to the outlier values and an experimental group (s = 0.96, p-value = 0.25) were found to be not normally distributed. Due to nonnormal nature of the data and unequal sample size, a non-parametric test was required to compare “phase2bets” for both the groups. The not normality of the data has been cross-checked with Box plots in figure 2 and figure 4.
Figure 1: Normal Q-Q plot for experimental group “phase2bets”
Figure 2: Box plot for experimental group “phase2bets”
Figure 3: Normal Q-Q plot for control group “phase2bets”
Figure 4: Box plot for control group “phase2bets”
Outlier values in both the cases reflected that the data of both groups were not normal. Both the groups were compared and no significant difference was found in the number of “phase2bets” according to Wilcoxon rank-sum test (z = -1.01, p >0.05). The proportion of near wins was 28% on average. The SOGS and PGSI scores of 71 participants were compared and a significant positive correlation (R = 0.44, p <0.05) was found. The relation between “phase2bet” scores and “near wins” scores have been described in figure 1.
Figure 5: Phase2bets with respect to the near-wins for all the participants
The result of the current study revealed that there was no significant effect of near wins for the persistence of playing the lottery game. The outcome was contradictory in nature compared to the result of Cote et al., 2003. The restriction on the amount of money involved in the game was at par with the original work. The positive correlation between South Oaks Screen and Problem Gambling Severity Index resembled earlier work. In another work, a parallel effect of actual win and near win on zygomaticus reactivity was studied, and a positive effect of near win was observed on the continuation of game trials for increased profit (Wu, Dijk, & Clark, 2015). The effect size of the sample data was not tested for the purpose of the study and this was a drawback of the study. The inclusion of habitual gamblers could also make the more interesting in nature (Sanders, Dixon, Hirst, & Rehfeldt, 2016). The addictive players were excluded from the study, and hence the effect on “phase2bets” for addictive nature to gamble was not measured (Burton, 2010).
References
Barbaranelli, C., Vecchione, R. F., & Podio-Guidugli, S. (2013). Estimating the Prevelance of Adult Problem Gam in Italy with SOG’s and PGSI. Journal of Gambling issues, 1-24.
Burton, L. J. (2010). An interactive approach to Writing Essays and Research Reports in Psychology (3rd ed.). Milton. Qld: Wiley.
Cote, D., Caron, A., Aubert, J., Desrochers, V., & Ladouceur, R. (2003). Near Wins Prolong Gambling on a Video Lottery Terminal. Journal of Gambling Studies, 19, 433-438.
Gardner, T. A., Cote, I. M., Gill, J. A., Grant, A., & Watkinson, A. R. (2003). Long-term Region wide Declines in Caribbean Corals. Science, 958-960.
Jie, X., Daxing, W., & Xin, X. (2018, 03 27). Susceptibility to the gambling near-win effect in optimists versus pessimists:. Personality and Individual Differences(129), 159-165. doi:10.1016/j.paid201803.032
Lesieur, H. R., & Blume, S. B. (1987, September). The South Oaks Gambling Screen:(SOGS) A New Instrument for the Identification of Pathological Gamblers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 1184-1188. doi:doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.144.9.1184
Sanders, C., Rehfeldt, R. A., Hirst, J., Dixin, M., & Dixon, M. R. (2016, May 11). An investigation of the effects of a mindfulness intervention on verbal behavior and physiological response in slot machine gamblers experiencing losses disguised as wins. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: https://une-edu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do;jsessionid=E699640EFC4B60D7B046A67EF0868300?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=TN_proquest1870783299&indx=1&recIds=TN_proquest1870783299&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&rende
Wu, Y., Dijk, E., & Clark, L. (2015, 03 01). Near-wins and near-losses in gambling: A behavioral and facial EMG study. Psychophysiology, 52, 359-366. doi:10.1111/psyp.12336
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