Many problem gamblers are aware that gambling brings about negative outcomes (e.g., monetary loss, guilt or shame, worry, anxiety) to them, but they still find it difficult to refrain from gambling. One of the reasons for this may be that gambling is strongly linked with positive outcomes (e.g., excitement, enjoyment, relaxation, comfort) in their mind albeit they may not be aware of this.
The problem is that gambling outcome expectancies, defined as the outcomes that individuals expect will occur from engaging in gambling, is typically measured with self-report measures, such as Gambling Expectancy Questionnaire (Gillespie et al., 2007). Respondents are asked to indicate the degree to which they agree with statements such as “If I gamble, this will bring about excitement to me”.
The assumption of self-report measures is that respondents have conscious access to all the anticipated outcomes of gambling, and that they are willing to report them truthfully and accurately to researchers. However, this assumption is often not valid for addictive behaviours, such as gambling, alcohol drinking and compulsive buying.
Response Time (RT) measure: A promising alternative to self-report
One alternative to self-report measures is assessing gambling outcome expectancies using indirect measures, as De Houwer (2006) suggested. According to cognitive psychology, the concept of gambling is strongly linked with situational cues (e.g., game cards) as well as affective outcomes a gambler frequently experienced after gambling sessions in his/her associative memory. Thus, gambling outcome expectancies can be indirectly assessed with the speed with which the concept of gambling (or situational cues of gambling) facilitates the activation of gambling outcome expectancies in the gambler’s memory with millisecond accuracy. This is also called the Response Time (RT) measure of outcome expectancies.
One indirect measure of gambling outcome expectancies is the adaptation of the classic affective priming task (Fazio et al., 1986). Gamblers are presented with a series of pictures depicting situational cues of gambling (e.g., game cards, slot machines: Prime) for 0.2 second and then are asked to categorize emotion words into the positive or negative group by using two keys (on the keyboard) as fast as they can, immediately after each picture. An experimental psychology software such as Direct RT is used to measure the speed of classifying words in millisecond accuracy.
Thus, under the scheme of the indirect measure, gamblers who classify positive [negative] emotion words faster than others following gambling pictures on the affective priming task can be said to have stronger positive [negative] gambling outcome expectancies.
John’s extremely fast categorization of positive emotion words following the exposure to gambling images indicates that he has “strong positive GOE” in his associative memory. In contrast, Lee’s slow categorization of positive emotion words following the exposure to gambling images indicates that he has “weak positive GOE” in his associative memory.
Upon brief exposure to chips, positive feelings associated with previous gambling experience spring to some gamblers’ mind within milliseconds! For others, it takes much longer.
Together with Sherry Stewart at Dalhousie University and her research team, I conducted a series of experiments and found that RT measures are useful ways of assessing gambling outcome expectancies that are not readily tapped with self-report measures.
For example, in Stewart et al., (2013), we found that as expected, regular gamblers responded to positive emotion words extremely fast following pictures depicting situational cues of gambling, which denotes strong positive gambling outcome expectancies (assessed with an indirect or Response Time measure). However, this was only found when gamblers were exposed to a short video showing typical casino scenes at the beginning of the study, but not found when gamblers were exposed to a short control video (i.e., track and field sports scenes). This indicates that in order to properly use RT measures of gambling outcome expectancies, it is important for participants to be reminded of their previous gambling experiences.
Stewart, M. J., Yi, S., & Stewart, S. H. (2014). Effects of Gambling-Related Cues on the Activation of Implicit and Explicit Gambling Outcome Expectancies in Regular Gamblers. Journal of Gambling Studies, 30(3), 653–668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-013-9383-8
Deep down, do you expect to feel excited or relaxed when you gamble?
Furthermore, in Yi et al. (2014), we proposed assessing two distinct types of positive gambling outcome expectancies with indirect (Response Time) measures. Reward gambling expectancies refer to anticipation of the addition of inherently positive mood states from gambling (positive reinforcing consequences: enjoyment, excitement). Relief gambling expectancies refer to anticipation of the removal of inherently negative mood states (negative reinforcing consequences: relaxation and comfort) by engaging in gambling. We assessed reward and relief gambling outcome expectancies with the adapted version of the affective priming task (Fazio et al., 1986).
We further hypothesized that the speed with which the concept of gambling facilitates the activation of reward gambling expectancies would be faster among gamblers who mainly gamble to enhance positive emotions (i.e., enhancement motive) than the others.
Indeed, we found that participants with strong enhancement gambling motive exhibited stronger reward gambling outcome expectancies than other participants.
Yi, S., Stewart, M., Collins, P., & Stewart, S. H. (2015). The Activation of Reward Versus Relief Gambling Outcome Expectancies in Regular Gamblers: Relations to Gambling Motives. Journal of Gambling Studies, 31(4), 1515–1530. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-014-9474-1
For further studies on indirect measures of gambling cognitions we published, see the following:
Hudson, A., Gough, K., Yi, S., Stiles, M., Davis MacNevin, P., & Stewart, S. H. (2017). Examining the effects of gambling-relevant cues on gambling outcome expectancies. International Gambling Studies, 17(2), 236–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2017.1324893
SStiles, M., Hudson, A., Ramasubbu, C., Ames, S., Yi, S., Gough, K., & Stewart, S. H. (2016). The Role of Memory Associations in Excessive and Problem Gambling. Journal of Gambling Issues, 34. https://doi.org/10.4309/jgi.2016.34.7
Stewart, M. J., Stewart, S. H., Yi, S., & Ellery, M. (2015). Predicting gambling behaviour and problems from implicit and explicit positive gambling outcome expectancies in regular gamblers. International Gambling Studies, 15(1), 124–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2014.1000357
My baby-step exploration of indirect measures of gambling cognitions:
Yi, S., & Kanetkar, V. (2010). Implicit measures of attitudes toward gambling: An exploratory study. Journal of Gambling Issues, 24, 140–. https://doi.org/10.4309/jgi.2010.24.9