Suboptimal foraging behavior: a new perspective on gambling.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Why do people gamble? Conventional views hold that gambling may be motivated by irrational beliefs, risk-seeking, impulsive temperament, or dysfunction within the same reward circuitry affected by drugs of abuse. An alternate, unexplored perspective is that gambling is an extension of natural foraging behavior to a financial environment. However, when these foraging algorithms are applied to stochastic gambling outcomes, undesirable results may occur. To test this hypothesis, we recruited participants based on their frequency of gambling-yearly (or less), monthly, and weekly-and investigated how gambling frequency related to irrational beliefs, risk-taking/impulsivity, and foraging behavior. We found that increased gambling frequency corresponded to greater gambling-related beliefs, more exploratory choices on an explore/exploit foraging task, and fewer points earned on a Patchy Foraging Task. Gambling-related beliefs negatively related to performance on the Patchy Foraging Task, indicating that individuals with more gambling-related cognitions tended to leave a patch too quickly. This indicates that frequent gamblers have reduced foraging ability to maximize rewards; however, gambling frequency -and by extension, poor foraging ability- was not related to risk-taking or impulsive behavior. These results suggest that gambling reflects the application of a dysfunctional foraging process to financial outcomes.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Addicott, MA; Pearson, JM; Kaiser, N; Platt, ML; McClernon, FJ
Published Date
- October 2015
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 129 / 5
Start / End Page
- 656 - 665
PubMed ID
- 26191945
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC4586367
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1939-0084
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1037/bne0000082
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- United States