Attitudes Towards Gambling Behaviour Psychology Essay

Attitudes Towards Gambling Behaviour Psychology EssayGambling has al focal heads tended to capture evasive views and opinions in gild. This project discusses definitions of gambol, causes, models and treat workforcets for those with fun puzzles. The primary entropy is collected from an online questionnaire which was designed found on previous research, drawing particularly from the 2007 British period of play prevalence fall out which was conducted in order to gain understanding about the kindly jar of playing period and the costs and benefits. Only 80 actual responses were preserve achieverfully. The participants age ranged from 17 52 fashioning the mean age 24. The majority of participants were female with 37.5% being male and 62.5% being female. Due to the ethnic demographic of the ara being predominantly snowy British, 81.2% of responses were from White backgrounds. A 14-item stead home plate was used for the chief(prenominal) body of the questionnaire, inc luding 7 despotic state ments and 7 electro forbid statements. Each statement was condition a score from 1 to 5, 1 being strongly associate and 5 being strongly disagree. In order to gather the correct data for analysis, the scores of the positive statements was swapped in reverse in order to propose the more approving attitudes for each item. The 14 items atomic sum up 18 individually scored and added together to do one score. This score is know as the attitude score. As in that respect were 14 items and each rating which was neither agree nor disagree was scored at 3, the mid-point attitude score is 42, eitherthing below this suggests an overall negative response and anything above thence suggests an overall positive response. Results show a strong correlation pointing towards a positive attitude towards swordplay when the mid-point attitude score is 42, most scores show scores above 42 therefore showing a positive* response. on that point is still one item that recei ved an overall negative response.IntroductionThe topic to be addressed in this research is about frolic, the contrary figures and acts and how the semipublic perceive frolic deportment. The research testament discuss various views and opinions of amicable and hassle fun and draw upon different theories as to why people attempt. some(a) other research studies will be evaluated also.Orford (2009) conducted a survey based topic using a 14 item attitude scaled which measures the general attitudes towards gambling. This scale was originally created to be used in a British gambling survey in 2007. This particular survey used a typical ingest of 8880 partakers who were over 16 years old. It ground that in most cases, attitudes towards gambling were negative, the only exception to these attitudes were from those who gambled the most. What is interesting about the results of this survey is that more people byword gambling to be a foolish and dangerous and to be harmful to fa milies and communities, however, the majority of participants were over against the prohibition of gambling. This survey has been the basis for the questionnaire in this study and therefore I will use the results of Orford survey to guide me towards the hypothesis for my own questionnaire.The main hypothesis is those who gamble regularly will render positive attitudes towards gambling. Another draw hypothesis is those who have ever had a gambling problem will feel empathy and sympathy towards other problem risk takers.Gambling has always tended to capture ambiguous views and opinions in society while drawing in both massive public involvement and an increasing amount of criticism on moral, social and economic grounds (Cornish, 1978). at that place argon galore(postnominal) different types and forms of gambling. The main or most popular forms ar gaming machines betting bingo casino lotteries and pools. free rein machines allow the player to participate in a computerised game of chance in exchange for coin and in some way the other forms of gambling are not dissimilar, due to either the exchange of funds for a game of chance, like in betting and lotteries. Betting, pools and some casino games take some form of logic and or strategy, and therefore is less based on chance or hazard, however, they are similar to gaming in regards to the exchange of money for chance (Gamble Aware, 2013). Game play therefore is a good way of describing what gambling is, for workout, Herman (1976) articulates how gambling go off be understood outgo done the example of game playing. He uses this instance because game playing is normal and inconspicuously integrated indoors the rest of gambling culture and society where it mostly occurs. Herman found that a common theme among previous research is that gambling is being studied as an activity that is singled out from the rest of the social society and that gambling as an activity is different to other routine activities. On the contrary, it gage be argued that gambling relates to and links with other factors of society that it is a product of this society and not separate. Therefore game play was a convenient topic for discussion in this instance.Gamblers anonymous (2012) see gambling as any form of wagering or bet placing, either for other people or themselves, whether it is for money or just for fun, where the result cannot be determined or relies on expertness or chance. This definition includes any form of gambling no matter how down(p) or insignificant because to a compulsive gambler, anything can be a trigger to resume their addiction. This definition opens up a new perspective on the term gambling. Routine activities that many of us participate in in everyday life may impact a compulsive gamblers life dramatically this suggests that more should be done to sensitively create public cognisance not just for ourselves but of those around us when gambling.A more in-depth definition and busin ess relationship of gambling is proposed by Perkins (1950), whom offered the idea that gambling could be metameric into 4 factors, the first being the swapping of money which takes place without any comparable value the second is the possession of money regulated only by luck or chance thirdly, the profit of the winners, made possible only by the loss of other people and finally, the risk involved which is excessive.Using the belief that different forms of gambling all have clear fundamental features in common, people lots, balancenally, requirement to know about the connection between involvement in gambling irrespective of type and the descriptions of gamblers, such as age, sex, social class and income. The easiest measures are those whereby samples can be divided into gamblers and non-gamblers on the foundation of whether they take part in any number of gambling activities (Cornish, 1978). When talking about frequence of gambling, Downes et al (1976) found that there were c onsiderable differences when it came to gender. Men seemed to gamble some(prenominal) more often than women and in particular younger men seemed to be more prone to gambling addiction, especially men from upper class and also, the poor. Downes also explains that younger men are more likely to participate in gambling activity.When it comes to explaining and discussing forms of problem gambling it is likely that biological, psychological and sociological processes are involved (Lesieur Rosenthal, Pathological gambling A refresh of the literature, 1991). Each scheme or model of problem gambling is more likely to only steeplight one of these processes.There are numerous ways to define problem and compulsive gamblers. Clinically, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) uses the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), and categorizes problem and compulsive gambling as an impulse control disorder and uses ten conditions to conduct a diagnosis of this disorde r. The ten conditions range from repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or infract gambling through to illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, theft or embezzlement to finance gambling (University of Chicago, 1999). These ten conditions represent three dimensions within problem gambling loss of control, damage or disruption, and dependence.Research has advocated that people who become easily attached or addicted to activities generally mistrust others around them, this could have stemmed from incidents of social or personal trauma, and therefore, they stay away from seeking help and instead turn to a specific addictive behaviour as a way of distracting them from this trauma, it is a temporary way of relieving distress. From this viewpoint, addiction may have developed as a process of relieving distress whereas those who have negative views about ideas of histories of trauma are more prone to seek their relief from other places, such as gambling. It was hypothesized by Hoe fler Kooyman (1996) that social and personal trauma can be related to problem gambling, and that this association would be arbitrated by perceptions of a lack of social support.One well known model of problem gambling is the social learning model, originating from skinners first (1953) social learning theory. This model assesses gambling as an operant behaviour, meaning a behaviour that can be special by different consequences and outcomes. Logically, one would assume that in the instance of gambling, money or a prize would be the positive reinforcement factor to arise addiction however, more recent research increasing shows the significance of physiological arousal and its properties of reinforcement (Petri Govern, 2003) which can be related to the social learning model. Intriguingly, skinners (1953) study revealed a contradictory argument that a persons behaviour to gamble is a reflection of their prior history reinforcement issues. Skinner posited the hypothesis that beginnin g with success or beginners luck as some would call it, leads to an increase in the probability that that person would continue to demonstrate gambling behaviours, even when the reinforcement ratio of winning had declined. Unfortunately, at the time, skinner was only able to test and demonstrate this theory on pigeons and rats. Later research on skinners theory allowed Custer (1984) to test the theory of humans, results showed that the same design towards addiction reflected from skinners results on animals, Custers results highlighted the high significance of an early big win towards the progression of a pathological gambling disorder.Although these results demonstrate what this pattern for gambling addiction is, the explanation of why the pattern occurs, still expects, specifically, the question should be why it exists even when reinforcement has gone or is decreased massively, for example, when the gambler hasnt had a win for a long time but still continues to gamble. One expla nation of this is what is known as the partial reinforcement extinction effect, this is when an absence seizure of reinforcement creates more persistence of gambling behaviour because the gambler knows that if they continues, eventually they will experience a win, therefore the continuation to gamble even by and by a long losing streak is eventually reinforced and consequently streng henceed by the most recent win (Griffiths, 1995). Another explanation is one that contemplates again the role and idea of arousal. According to Brown (1987) this explanation considers arousal as a key factor of problem gambling, while also relating to physiological views from the social learning model. According to browns research, each person has their own unique psychophysiological needs for arousal, for example, one individual may learn to regulate their arousal needs through gambling, therefore in this instance, the loss while gambling would be the main reinforcement of gambling behaviour.Browns (1 987) research is not limited to the theory of arousal he also offered the idea that there are as many as six processes which participate in the development of problem gambling. These six processes are listed consort to (Upfold, 2013)Affective states, like anxiety or depressionCognitive distortions about gamblingBehavioural reinforcement schedulesSocial and institutional determinants, like the opportunity to gambleSubcultural conditions, such as the prevailing attitude toward gambling, and the prevailing values of the individuals social context and reference meetings,AndInternal fantasy relationships with personifications such as lady luck, and the gamblers parents.To mother a brief explanation, a person first has to be presented to gambling to enable the trigger to be able to express gambling behaviour this is usually due to social determinants or cultural conditions. To then continue and perhaps escalate the gambling behaviour, arousal and reinforcement is needed. At a point in a gamblers life where all affective and cognitive factors are present, sometimes on with internal fantasy relationships, gambling is the most important task and a priority to that individual (Brown R. , 1987). This explanation that brown offers is broad and in depth, it offers a more complex understanding of problem gambling than the simple model of social learning (Upfold, 2013).For the benefit of evaluation and comparison, the psychodynamic model offers some interesting theories centred on gambling behaviours. This model suggests that problem gambling exists in the psyche it is proposed by Epstein (1994) that gambling is an unconscious attempt to resolve conflicts within the psyche. Conflicts that exist in the psyche are uncontrollable and it is suggested that gambling is a behaviour performed in order to listen to relieve psychological pain and stress.Within this area of exploration, there are a few main psychodynamic oriented theories which can help explain behaviour such as gambling. In these theories there tends to be three key factors, as listed by Griffiths (1995) these areGambling is an unconscious fill-in for pre-genital libidinal/ high-pressure outlets.Gambling involves an unconscious desire to lose a wish to be punished in reaction to guilt.Gambling is a medium for continued decree (but not resolution) of psychological conflictRosenthal (1994) proposes that most problem gamblers have narcissistic tendencies, along with regular feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy which then leads to their psyche constructing a false world where gambling can be perceived as a solution to their pain. This fictional world enables the gambler to learn feelings of power, independence and overall, feel in control and important while they gamble. Rosenthal (1994) also comments that the narcissistic tendencies are vulnerable to fluctuating feelings of depression and arousal. It is remark that by participating in gambling behaviour, these feelings are regulated.An alternative topic of interest in the psychodynamic theory is that of loss, this term includes any form of actual separation from the death of a loved companion to an mad loss such as self-esteem (Upfold, 2013). To sum up the theory of loss, it is that a universal loss is a significant issue for a problem gambler, resulting in intolerance for losses in the future. Furthermore, the psychodynamic theory suggests that gambling is triggered by an emotional loss but additionally can be a way of avoiding further risks that could cause the emotional pain to increase. The theory suggests that, if a child loses its mother when their psychic development is not yet fully matured, they will then use gambling as a substitute to the love of their mother. An obvious theme throughout the explanation of psychodynamic theories is that it is largely based upon opinions and does not hold a strong factual or scientific content, this is probably due to the concepts of the unconscious and the psyche bein g untestable as they are not physical objects or places, they are entirely theoretical, most of Rosenthals so called evidence was based upon a few grouped or many individual case studies, therefore cannot be relied upon for dead-on(prenominal) scientific research (Cox, Yu, Afifi, Ladouceur, 2005).Granting that the psychodynamic approach isnt reliable in actual research, it is however a good path to note down when thinking about contributions to society, for example, counsellors workings with problem gamblers may be led further to understand that there may be unseen, internal processes coinciding with the actual gambling behaviour itself, also, and many gamblers are thought to benefit from counselling which explores their feelings of emotional loss, intimacy and their fantasy ideas about gambling and luck. Many psychodynamic theorists advocate that some gamblers may reunite with these feelings from their unconscious when they stop gambling, then creating an uncomfortable urge to gamble again (Upfold, 2013).Before moving on to results and statistics about the publics perception of gambling, first it should be discussed as to why the publics perception is important to us and society. First of all, the stances of the public community possibly will influence the capability of local and national governments to apply new, or review existing legislation associated with the control of gambling and gambling activities (Mond, Davidson, McAllister, 2011). In many countries, controlling gambling activities legislation are already under review, for example, in Australia, high stake poker machines will require you to commit to a spending limit in order to play, this disables the player from betting any more money on that particular game that day (Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform, 2011). Secondly, the more accurately public perception is studied, the higher the likeliness of new therapies and discussions becoming available for those with gamblin g problems and addictions. Additionally, negative perceptions regarding people with gambling problems may composite negative emotional states such as vulnerability and thus make more people hesitancy to seek help (Mond, Davidson, McAllister, 2011).TreatmentsIn numerous countries around the world, there is growing fascination in early interpolation tactics to support people who are suffering from severe gambling-related problems. Key to these thoughts and terms is whether we are able, as professionals, to recognize problem gambling behaviour and or hazardous behaviour in risky gambling situations before people officially seek help or treatment (Delfabbro, King, Griffiths, 2012).Literature shows that interventions and treatments for problem gambling and be rather similar to the methods involved in treating other disorders such as drug addiction. Much like drug addiction, a major challenge in treating gambling problems is being able to prevent a relapse. An example to support this is that not many people that discontinue using drugs due to treatment remain sober in the long-term future. Within drug addiction, slips are single episodes of drug use that subsequently lead to a major relapse (Marlatt Gordon, 1985). There are so many factors that can affect the risk of any individual trying to recover from any kind of addiction, from relapsing, these factors can be environmental however, and the majority are personal to each individual. In order to succeed in recovering from an addiction, the development of new skills is essential. These skills should encourage positive behaviour and be integrated into everyday life so that in the event of a relapse these skills will become easier to perform (Brown, Schubert, Saykally, Evenson, 1986). Many of these skills will be something to substitute trigger activities from their drug addiction, many take up forms of exercise and others turn to spiritual or religious activities in order to sustain their abstinence. At this p oint it is unknown whether or not the same behaviour patterns will help in problem gamblers to help them quit.It may be important to understand the characteristics of those who want to gain treatment for their gambling. Reasons for this are so that it can help develop the correct effective treatment for those who actually want to stop gambling. It has already been noted that the majority of clinical research on the topic of problem gambling has been either case studies or small sample studies. Data collected from this type of research is not able to be generalised to the wider population. Due to this disadvantage, creating accurate demographic profiles of treatment seekers is problematic however there has been research that gives a small insight into the most likely candidates. Research from Blackman (1986), Ciarrocchi Richardson (1989) and Volberg (1995)have found that in general, it tends to be white middle-aged men that most commonly seek treatment for their gambling addiction h owever, more recently, research is finding an increase in women wanting treatment or advice on gambling problems (Moore Volberg, 1998). Many treatment seekers are in their 30s and 40s and have an average or higher educational background.There are many methods to treat problem gambling, the methods derive from many approaches such as psychoanalytical/psychodynamic and behavioral approaches. This discussion of treatment approaches will both reiterate and contradict previous evaluation of the same approaches that have attempted to explain the causes of gambling problems.Psychodynamic professionals look for an understanding of gambling by reflecting upon the motivation influences that come from our unconscious processes they refer to it as the science of the mind and consider how these processes may be able to countervail cognition and emotion and turn them into a behaviour (Lesieur Blume, 1987). Although psychodynamic therapies and treatments have not proven to gain effective resul ts, they are the most regularly used forms of treatment for problem gambling behaviour at this time. The psychodynamic perspective proposes that problem gambling is an expression or a symptom of an underlying issue within the psyche. The best way of helping gamblers at the moment is by attempting to make them understand their underlying issue and confront it (Rosenthal Rugle, 1994).While many other academics have recorded the significance of psychodynamic treatments relating to addiction, there are no controlled studies or research that investigates the efficiency of this approach in terms of treating a gambling problem.Moving onto a behavioural approach, treatments within this approach are more active, especially looking towards classical and operant conditioning theories as a solution or treatment. One known treatment that is currently used is aversion therapy. This involves a negative stimulus being applied to the patient while they are thinking about or participating in gamblin g behaviour, the negative stimulus us quite often small electric shock. Obviously, this method has many ethical drawbacks and is used only in severe cases and if the patient is mentally stable to agree to it (Epstein, 1994).A second example of a behaviourist treatment is a simple mathematical process called imaginable desensitization. It uses two stages in the process. First of all the patient is taught how to relax, once they are in a relaxed state, the behaviourist professional will ask them to recall some situations related to gambling that they find stimulating. From this, the patient will learn to relax then they find themselves in situations where they are able to gamble, the relaxation will be a substitute to giving in to their addiction (Brown R. , 1987). This approach links closely to some psychodynamic theories, but initially is seen as a cognitive treatment.MethodsIt was decided that an online questionnaire would be used to conduct this research because they are quick a nd easy to create and collect data from. Choosing to conduct this questionnaire online proved to be the the right way choice also as it did not take up lots of time for either the researcher or for the participants. Online questionnaires are effective for a number of reasons, the main one being that they are inexpensive and easy to gain fast responses from a large sample size (Deutskens, Ruyter, Wetzels, Oosterveld, 2004). I designed my questionnaire based on previous research, drawing particularly from the 2007 British gambling prevalence survey which was conducted in order to gain understanding about the social impact of gambling and the costs and benefits (Orford, 2009). General lifestyle and demographic questions are at the beginning of the questionnaire in order to gain data of who is participating in the research. The main body of the questionnaire is the 14-item attitude scale originally produced by Orford (2009) who believed that it was vital that his survey about attitude s towards gambling should contain a dependable and legitimate scale that can reliably measure general attitudes towards gambling. This scale uses a straight forward format containing a sequence of statements which express either a specific negative or positive attitude, the participant would rate how much they disagreed or agreed with each statement using a lickert scale. My questionnaire used all 14 items in its attitude scale, 7 positive statements and 7 negative statements. Each statement was given a score from 1 to 5, 1 being strongly agree and 5 being strongly disagree. In order to gather the correct data for analysis, the scores of the positive statements was swapped in reverse in order to indicate the more approving attitudes for each item. The 14 items are individually scored and added together to create one score. This score is known as the attitude score. As there were 14 items and each rating which was neither agree nor disagree was scored at 3, the mid-point attitude sco re is 42, anything below this suggests an overall negative response and anything above therefore suggests an overall positive response.The aim was to have a sample size of 100, only 80 actual responses were recorded successfully. The participants age ranged from 17 52 making the mean age 24. The majority of participants were female with 37.5% being male and 62.5% being female. Due to the ethnic demographic of the area being predominantly White British, 81.2% of responses were from White backgrounds. The sample was collected online via email, Facebook and twitter accounts along with a description of the study and its purposes. None of the participants are excluded as all relevant questions were answered in every response.To cash in ones chips social desirability, whereby the participant might purposely give the answers the researcher is looking for, the questionnaire aims were distorted slightly by asking general exercise, drinking and diet questions along with gambling questions. The second part of the questionnaire will be the main part used for analysis this section will state that it is a control group questionnaire about gambling. The title of the questionnaire was explained to be assessing how the public perceive social behaviours, although the questionnaire aim was to measure how the public perceive only gambling behaviours. Ethical situations were taken into consideration in this instance and it was decided that slightly deceiving participants was needed in order to enable the study to gain more realistic results and validity.The next part of the questionnaire careful if each participant had a gambling problem, ever had a gambling problem or if theyre parents or guardians ever had a gambling problem, the results from this section are to be taken into consideration when analysing the final question. The final question is a vignette about a young males gambling problem and some anguish that gambling had got him into participants were given a list of a ttitudes and feelings such as Anger sympathy empathy and were asked if they blamed the characters parents or himself. This section is relevant because those with positive attitudes towards gambling may relate to the character and therefore give a positive or sympathetic attitude towards the situation.A recent study about profiling problem gamblers shows that there is near enough a 50/50 weighting of female problem gamblers to female social gamblers. Also, there are a advantageously higher amount of males at risk to problem gambling than when compared to women.When analysing demographic results, findings show that there was a significantly lower amount of problem gamblers in the 65 years and over age category. The second most at risk age group was found, in this case to be 35 49 year olds, leaving the most at risk category to be the 18 24 year olds (Department Of Justice, 2013).Demographic Analysis and ResultsThe following results present demographic data collected from the primar y survey conducted. The data contains the total number of responses returned for all questions and the representative percentage of responses for each modality available. If there were any non-responses to any questions, this will not be included in the charts and tables. If the value of representative responses is 0, this will not show in the charts, however will be shown in the tables.This chart shows the representative percentage age of all participants.Age rangesFrequencies% representativeFrom 17 to 202936.2%From 21 to 294050.0%From 30 to 3733.8%38 and over810.0%Total80100.0%This chart shows the representative percentage gender of all participants.Gender modalityFrequencies% Representative manly3037.5%Female5062.5%Total80100.0%Etiological reports of problem gambling have commonly concentrated on men from Gamblers Anonymous (GA) men from the Veterans Administration hospital system (Lesieur Blume, 1987) Therefore, women are diagnostically underrepresented also. Numerous initial s tudies that did include women used small samples or case studies from Gamblers Anonymous (Lesieur Blume, 1991). These results show a much higher percentage of female respondents than men. Thus, it enables this type of research to be analysed for gender specific data if needed.This chart shows the representative percentage ethnicity of all participants.The table below shows all the modalities available for selection within the survey.Ethnicity modalityFrequencies% RepresentativeWhite6581.2%Mixed white and dismal Caribbean78.8%Mixed white and black African11.2%Mixed white and Asian00.0%Any other mixed background22.5%Asian indian33.8%Asian Pakistani00.0%Asian Bangladeshi00.0%Any other Asian background00.0%Black Caribbean11.2%Black African00.0%Any other black background11.2%Chinese00.0%Any other ethnic group00.0%Total80100.0%Results frequency score and attitude score tableThe results shown in the table below indicates the response count to each modality and also to each option within that modality. The frequencies are shown to indicate how many responses were given, however any non-responses are not shown in the table. In place of a percentage score, an attitude score is present. An explanation of the attitude scores is presented below the table.Strongly agreeagreeneither agree nor disagree