Effects of impulsivity, reinforcement sensitivity, and cognitive style on Pathological Gambling symptoms among frequent slot machine players

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.10.044Get rights and content

Abstract

Pathological Gambling (PG) is the inability to resist recurrent urges to gamble excessively despite harmful consequences to the gambler or others. A cognitive-behavioral Pathways Model of PG (Blaszczynski & Nower, 2002) suggests individual differences in rash impulsivity and reward sensitivity, together with a cognitive style that promotes poor decision making, as risk factors. These individual differences were examined in a community sample of experienced slot machine players (N = 100), who were classified into Low, Moderate, and Problem gambling groups according to the Problem Gambling Severity Index (Ferris & Wynne, 2001). There were significant group differences on rash impulsivity as measured by the Eysenck Impulsivity scale, and on reward sensitivity as measured by the BIS/BAS Drive scale. For cognitive style, there were differences on Actively Openminded Thinking (AOT), but not the Rational Experiential Inventory. Hierarchical regression analyses found that impulsivity and AOT predicted severity of PG, but that AOT mediated the effect of BAS Drive. A thinking style that promotes erroneous cognition may correlate with PG, but individual differences in rash impulsivity and reward-seeking play a more critical role in the etiology of PG. The individual characteristics of Pathological Gamblers are similar to those of people with Substance Use Disorders.

Highlights

► Community sample of 100 gamblers completed measures of personality and cognitive style. ► Problem gamblers had higher Eysenck Impulsivity and BAS Drive than nonproblem gamblers. ► Actively Openminded Thinking mediated effect of BAS Drive on gambling severity. ► Rational Experiential Inventory scores had no effects on gambling severity. ► Problem gamblers have high impulsivity and BAS Drive, but not irrational cognitive style.

Introduction

Pathological Gambling (PG) is the inability to resist recurrent urges to gamble excessively despite harmful consequences to the gambler or others. The most influential account of the phenomenon is the Pathways Model of Problem and Pathological Gambling (Blaszczynski & Nower, 2002). According to this theory, “Operant conditioning occurs when intermittent wins delivered on a variable ratio produce states of arousal often described as equivalent to a drug induced high.”, and once the habit of gambling is acquired, “Attempts to resist completing the habit provoke a state of aversive arousal experienced as a drive, compulsion or urge to carry out the behavior.” (p. 491). This learning mechanism implies that clinical PG symptoms should be increased among people who gamble frequently, who are motivated strongly by the excitement of winning, and who have weak control over their compulsion to gamble excessively. Disinhibition of the gambling habit involves both reward seeking and rash impulsivity, and in this regard the Pathways Model is consistent with the 2-Component Approach to Reinforcing Substances model of addiction (Gullo, Ward, Dawe, Powell, & Jackson, 2011).

The Pathways Model also proposes a complex set of cognitive mechanisms that promote persistent gambling despite recurring losses. This is due to faulty decision making that leads to desperate “chasing” of lost money:

  • As the frequency of gambling increases, strong biased and distorted cognitive schemas appear. These schemas shape beliefs surrounding attribution, personal skill and control over outcome, biased evaluations, erroneous perceptions, superstitious thinking and probability theory. The potency and pervasiveness of distorted and irrational cognitive belief structures strengthen with increasing levels of involvement in gambling (p. 491).

Thus, the Pathways Model proposes two distinct phases of PG: an acquisition phase marked by habit formation through conditioning, and a maintenance phase characterized by irrational decision-making. The focus of the present paper is on individual differences in personality and cognitive style that may elevate vulnerability to clinical PG symptoms among people who gamble frequently. It was predicted that PG symptoms would be positively correlated with reward sensitivity and impulsivity because those traits should facilitate acquisition, and be negatively correlated with a rational cognitive style necessary for effective decision-making.

The personality of Pathological Gamblers is characterized by Negative Affective and Disinhibitory traits, including facets of impulsivity (MacLaren, Fugelsang, Harrigan, & Dixon, 2011). This combination may form an externalizing dimension of psychopathology (Markon et al., 2005, Widiger, 2011) that may be expressed as PG, as Substance Use Disorders (Kotov, Gamez, Schmidt, & Wilson, 2010), and in other behaviors that reflect Antisocial or Borderline features (Samuel & Widiger, 2008). These meta-analytic findings are consistent with the Pathways Model in its assertion of a specific subtype of “Antisocial Impulsivist” Pathological Gambler with elevated risk compared to those who are merely “Behaviorally Conditioned” but without personality pathology (Milosevic & Ledgerwood, 2010).

Impulsive antisociality is a dimension of psychopathy (Ross, Benning, Patrick, Thompson, & Thirston, 2009), which reflects the maladjustment of brain systems that control learning to seek rewards and to fear punishments (Corr, 2010, Fowles, 1988, Lykken, 1995). According to the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST; Gray & McNaughton, 2000), the neuropsychological substrate of excessive reward seeking is the Behavioral Approach System (BAS), which consists of the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopaminergic systems (Gray & McNaughton, 2000). The Fight-Flight-Freeze and Behavioral Inhibition Systems (BIS) mediate affective and behavioral responses to threat and response conflict, and include the amygdala and septo-hippocampal structures. Exposure to unusually powerful sources of reward (e.g. winning large prizes) may sensitize the BAS and feedback positively into a compulsive pattern of addictive behavior (Koob and Le Moal, 2008, Robinson and Berridge, 2000).

Reward sensitivity is a critical component of disinhibition in PG. In student samples, BAS Drive (Carver & White, 1994) correlates positively with time and money spent gambling (O’Connor, Stewart, & Watt, 2009), and Sensitivity to Reward (Torrubia, Avila, Molto, & Caseras, 2001) correlates positively with PG symptoms (Mercer & Eastwood, 2010). Clinical studies of Pathological Gamblers have found higher BAS (Goudriaan, Oosterlaan, deBeurs, & van den Brink, 2006), and Sensitivity to Reward (Loxton, Nguyen, Casey, & Dawe, 2008) compared to nonpathological gamblers. In experimental studies, high BAS predicts risky decision-making (Franken and Muris, 2005, Suhr and Tsanadis, 2007) in the Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Lee, 1999) and on a computerized dice game (Kim & Lee, 2011), as well as higher wagers on simulated slot machines (Brunborg et al., 2011, Demaree et al., 2008).

Distorted cognitions are common among Pathological Gamblers (Joukhador, MacCallum, & Blaszczynski, 2003). They may easily recall wins because of an availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974a), they may fail to deliberately weigh the probability of winning against the risk of losing (Fletcher, Marks, & Hine, 2011), and they may misattribute winning to personal skill because they have an illusion of control (Langer, 1975). Reliance on such cognitive heuristics and biases is a trait-like characteristic (Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996) that is separate from general cognitive ability (West, Toplak, & Stanovich, 2008). Cognitive style ranges from a rational, logical and fact-based thinking style to one that is intuitive, emotional and heuristic. Cognitive style can be measured using the Rational Experiential Inventory (REI; Pacini & Epstein, 1999), or the Actively Openminded Thinking test (AOT; Stanovich & West, 2008).

The role played by cognitive style in PG has been directly tested in two studies. Emond and Marmurek (2010) found that Pathological Gamblers had higher scores on a measure of erroneous gambling cognitions and lower scores on the REI Rational scale than nonproblem gamblers. Toplak, Liu, MacPherson, Toneatto, and Stanovich (2007) found lower scores among Pathological Gamblers than nonproblem gamblers on a subset of 8 items from the REI Rational scale. The Pathological Gamblers also scored higher on the Eysenck Impulsivity scale (I7; Eysenck, Pearson, Easting, & Allsopp, 1985), and lower on the Consideration of Future Consequences scale (CFC; Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994), which measures delay nondiscounting.

Rash impulsivity and reward sensitivity are separate traits (Cross, Copping, & Campbell, 2011) that have independent effects on PG (Loxton et al., 2008). Although Toplak et al. (2007) found effects of cognitive style and rash impulsivity, the placement of reward sensitivity within the constellation of cognitive style and impulsive traits has not been characterized among frequent gamblers. We examined rash impulsivity and reward sensitivity along with cognitive style as predictors of PG symptoms in a community sample of people who were at risk for PG because they play slot machines frequently.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 50 men and 50 women aged 19–82 years (M = 38.7, SD = 15.96). They were recruited using advertisements on a local classified advertisements website that requested “experienced slots players who gamble at least twice a month”. To insure equivalent numbers of men and women with Low, Moderate, and Problem gambling symptoms, 29 community respondents who had recently participated in a separate experiment in our lab were invited to also be in the present study. According to scores on the

Results

As shown in Table 1, the Problem group had higher I7 and lower AOT scores than the Low and Moderate groups. The Problem group also had higher BAS Drive than the Low group. Importantly, the groups did not differ on the REI Rational scale. As shown in Table 2, continuous PGSI scores were correlated positively with I7, BAS Drive and Funseeking, and BIS Fear. PGSI scores were also correlated negatively with CFC and AOT, but not with REI Rational. The null results for REI Rational are contrary to

Discussion

Individual differences in traits representing approach motivation (i.e. BAS Drive) and inhibitory control (i.e. I7) systems were the best predictors of clinical PG symptoms among frequent slot machine gamblers. This is consistent with the 2-CARS model of personality characteristics (Gullo et al., 2011) that may reflect neurobiological mechanisms of addiction (George & Koob, 2010). The Negative Affective and Disinhibitory traits of Pathological Gamblers (MacLaren et al., 2011) are similar to

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Center.

References (53)

  • N. Heym et al.

    An evaluation of the relationship between Gray’s revised RST and Eysenck’s PEN: Distinguishing BIS and FFFS in Carver and White’s BIS/BAS scales

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2008)
  • D.Y. Kim et al.

    Effects of the BAS and BIS on decision-making in a gambling task

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2011)
  • N.J. Loxton et al.

    Reward drive, rash impulsivity and punishment sensitivity in problem gamblers

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2008)
  • V.V. MacLaren et al.

    The personality of pathological gamblers: A meta-analysis

    Clinical Psychology Review

    (2011)
  • A. Milosevic et al.

    The subtyping of pathological gambling: A comprehensive review

    Clinical Psychology Review

    (2010)
  • R.M. O’Connor et al.

    Distinguishing BAS risk for university students’ drinking, smoking and gambling behaviors

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2009)
  • D.B. Samuel et al.

    A meta-analytic review of the relationships between the five factor model and DSM-IV-TR personality disorders: A facet level analysis

    Clinical Psychology Review

    (2008)
  • J.A. Suhr et al.

    Affect and personality correlates of the Iowa Gambling Task

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2007)
  • R.J. van Holst et al.

    Why gamblers fail to win: A review of cognitive and neuroimaging findings in pathological gambling

    Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

    (2010)
  • R.M. Baron et al.

    The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research – Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1986)
  • A. Bechara et al.

    Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to decision-making

    Journal of Neuroscience

    (1999)
  • A. Blaszczynski et al.

    A pathways model of problem and pathological gambling

    Addiction

    (2002)
  • C.S. Carver et al.

    Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS scales

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1994)
  • C.P. Cross et al.

    Sex differences in impulsivity: A meta-analysis

    Psychological Bulletin

    (2011)
  • M.S. Emond et al.

    Gambling related cognitions mediate the association between thinking style and problem gambling severity

    Journal of Gambling Studies

    (2010)
  • S. Epstein et al.

    Individual differences in intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational thinking styles

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1996)
  • Cited by (56)

    • Impulsivity and loot box engagement

      2023, Telematics and Informatics
    • A framework for understanding reasoning errors: From fake news to climate change and beyond

      2023, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
      Citation Excerpt :

      People who are more analytic also have better academic (Stanovich & West, 1998; Thomson & Oppenheimer, 2016) and job performance (Alaybek, Wang, Dalal, Dubrow, & Boemerman, 2021; Corgnet, Gonzalez, & Mateo, 2015; Otero, Salgado, & Moscoso, 2021). They also tend to have better financial performance (Corgnet et al., 2015) and fewer gambling problems (MacLaren, Fugelsang, Harrigan, & Dixon, 2012; Walker, Stange, Dixon, Fugelsang, & Koehler, 2022). Analytic thinking is also associated with increased resistance to things like email fraud (Jones, Towse, Race, & Harrison, 2019), online scams (Mosleh, Pennycook, Arechar, & Rand, 2021), and social media bots (Kenny, Fischhoff, Davis, Carley, & Canfield, 2022).

    • Behavioral implications of using an online slot machine game to motivate employees: A cautionary tale

      2021, Accounting, Organizations and Society
      Citation Excerpt :

      The countervailing effects on training activity that we document for players versus non-players suggest that the employee behaviors associated with using chance games such as slot machines to motivate desired behavior in an organizational setting are complex and are likely sensitive to the mix of employees who respond positively or negatively to such games. Results for players are consistent with the theory underlying the appeal of slot machines that afford individuals frequent opportunity for arousal (Billieux et al., 2012; Choliz, 2010; Griffiths, 1993; MacLaren et al., 2012). However, the decline in training activity observed for non-players may have been a deliberate response to the slot machine introduction, which our survey results suggest may arise because of negative views about the low odds of winning a prize on the slot machine.

    • Applicability of the four-factor personality vulnerability model for substance misuse in understanding gambling behaviour and gambling problems

      2021, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      Impulsivity was the only SURPS variable that emerged as an independent predictor of disordered gambling severity in our model. This finding that high impulsivity is associated with greater severity of gambling-related problems in emerging adults is consistent with the existing literature, both with respect to university students (MacLaren et al., 2011) and other populations such as treatment-seeking gamblers (Myrseth et al., 2009) and electronic slot machine players (MacLaren et al., 2015). Given that impulsivity has been shown to predict disordered gambling longitudinally (see Dowling et al., 2017 for review), and that younger gamblers have been shown to progress from regular gambling to disordered gambling much more quickly that older gamblers (Carneiro et al., 2014), early identification and intervention for those at risk is perhaps especially salient for younger gamblers such as emerging adult university students.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text