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The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: One’s belief in good luck, and belief that it is a personal trait, could play a crucial role in gambling behavior, and can lead gamblers to have an irrational anticipation to win and to over-generalize their subjective sense of control. And upward counterfactual thinking has bee...

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Autores principales: Kim, So-Ra, Kwon, Young-Sil, Hyun, Myoung-Ho
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Akadémiai Kiadó 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712757/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26690618
http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/2006.4.2015.036
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author Kim, So-Ra
Kwon, Young-Sil
Hyun, Myoung-Ho
author_facet Kim, So-Ra
Kwon, Young-Sil
Hyun, Myoung-Ho
author_sort Kim, So-Ra
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND AND AIMS: One’s belief in good luck, and belief that it is a personal trait, could play a crucial role in gambling behavior, and can lead gamblers to have an irrational anticipation to win and to over-generalize their subjective sense of control. And upward counterfactual thinking has been considered to be a factor that offsets those irrational beliefs. This study examined the effects of belief in good luck and of upward counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior. METHODS: The subjects of the study were 52 college students who had been classified as non-problematic and non-pathological gamblers. They were assigned into one of two groups, distinguished by having either high (n = 25) or low (n = 27) levels of self-perception of luck, as determined by their scores on the Belief in Good Luck (BIGL) Scale. The subjects were assigned to different groups according to their reported experience of upward counterfactual thinking. RESULTS: We found that those who had high BIGL scores spent more money on gambling than those who had low BIGL scores. Moreover, after taking into account the upward counterfactual thinking, the subjects with high BIGL scores showed a dramatic decrease in their expectations of winning. DISCUSSION: The results indicate that to perceive luck as a personal and internal trait could affect gambling, which is one of the cognitive errors for gambling addiction. On the other hand, given that upward counterfactual thinking plays an important role in reducing cognitive errors, it could act as a protective factor against gambling addiction.
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spelling pubmed-47127572016-01-19 The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior Kim, So-Ra Kwon, Young-Sil Hyun, Myoung-Ho J Behav Addict Full-Length Report BACKGROUND AND AIMS: One’s belief in good luck, and belief that it is a personal trait, could play a crucial role in gambling behavior, and can lead gamblers to have an irrational anticipation to win and to over-generalize their subjective sense of control. And upward counterfactual thinking has been considered to be a factor that offsets those irrational beliefs. This study examined the effects of belief in good luck and of upward counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior. METHODS: The subjects of the study were 52 college students who had been classified as non-problematic and non-pathological gamblers. They were assigned into one of two groups, distinguished by having either high (n = 25) or low (n = 27) levels of self-perception of luck, as determined by their scores on the Belief in Good Luck (BIGL) Scale. The subjects were assigned to different groups according to their reported experience of upward counterfactual thinking. RESULTS: We found that those who had high BIGL scores spent more money on gambling than those who had low BIGL scores. Moreover, after taking into account the upward counterfactual thinking, the subjects with high BIGL scores showed a dramatic decrease in their expectations of winning. DISCUSSION: The results indicate that to perceive luck as a personal and internal trait could affect gambling, which is one of the cognitive errors for gambling addiction. On the other hand, given that upward counterfactual thinking plays an important role in reducing cognitive errors, it could act as a protective factor against gambling addiction. Akadémiai Kiadó 2015-12 2015-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4712757/ /pubmed/26690618 http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/2006.4.2015.036 Text en © 2015 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Full-Length Report
Kim, So-Ra
Kwon, Young-Sil
Hyun, Myoung-Ho
The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title_full The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title_fullStr The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title_full_unstemmed The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title_short The effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
title_sort effects of belief in good luck and counterfactual thinking on gambling behavior
topic Full-Length Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712757/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26690618
http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/2006.4.2015.036
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