Griffiths

Question 1

1. In the study on gambling by Griffiths there are four hypotheses.
   a) State one of these hypotheses (2 marks

b) Explain how evidence was collected to support this hypothesis
(2 marks)

Answer 1

1. no difference between the skill levels of regular and non-regular fruit machine gamblers
2. regular gamblers would produce more irrational verbalisations than non-regular gamblers
3. regular gamblers would report themselves as being more skills orientated than non-regular gamblers
4. ‘thinking aloud’ participants would take longer to complete the task than ‘non-thinking aloud’ participants
5. 7 dependant variables were measured they include total play, total time, play rate, end stake, wins, win rate in time and play.
6. Participants in the thinking aloud condition were instructed to verbalise everything that was going through their minds when they were playing the fruit machine. This was recorded and transcribed.
7. Through post experiment semi-structured interviews. Participants asked whether there was any skill involved and asked to identify skills used.
8. The dependant variable total time in minutes of play during one session was recorded for participants in the thinking aloud and non-thinking aloud conditions and this then was compared to identify that thinking aloud participants took longer to complete the task.

Question 2

2. Griffiths refers to heuristics in his study on gambling.
   a) Explain what a heuristic is (2 marks)

b) Describe one of the heuristic that might explain gambling behaviour
(2 marks)

Answer 2

• a heuristic is a common sense set of rules that people use to solve problems an example being illusion of control.

• Illusion of control: behaviour which gives you the illusion you are in control, such as choosing you own lottery ticket or having a favourite fruit machine. Such control makes the player think there is skill involved.
• Flexible attributions: gamblers’ self esteem is bolstered by attributing success to their own skill level and failure to some external influence. Similarly they put a spin on events so that a loss becomes described as a ‘near win’ or something that could have been predicted in advance.
• Representativeness: a belief that random events have a pattern e.g. if you toss a coin nine times and keep getting heads it must be increasingly likely that tails will come up next time. Observed events do not represent true odds exactly.
• Availability bias: people’s judgments reflect the frequency of relevant instances. For example, you hear about lots of people who have won the pools which makes you think that it is more common than you think.
• Illusory correlations: people (mistakenly) believe that some events are correlated with success, for example rolling dice softly to get low numbers.
• Fixation on absolute frequency: measuring success in terns of absolute rather than relative frequency. Gamblers may win a lot but relative to the number of times they gamble their successes are small.

Question 3

3. In the Griffith’s study of gambling describe one similarity and one difference that were found between the regular and non-regular gamblers. (4)

Answer 3

Differences:
• Regular gamblers had a significantly higher playing rate; 8 gambles per minute as compared to 6 per minute for NRGs. Or
• Regular gamblers who thought aloud had a significantly lower win rate in number of gambles in comparisons to NRGS.
Similarities:
• Both groups use more rational than irrational verbalisations.

Question 4

4. Griffiths used a method called the ‘thinking aloud’ to gain insight into gamblers’ behaviour.
   a) Briefly outline what this method involved. (2)
   ]
   b) Give one weakness of using this method to assess gambling (2)

Answer 4

• The thinking aloud method involves verbalising every thought that passes through your mind while you are playing.
• You can question the validity of the thinking aloud method is its measuring what it has been designed to measure. This is a very hard thing to do whilst playing on a fruit machine also participants may censor what they are thinking.

Question 5

5. From the study by Griffiths,
   a) Give one example of an irrational verbalisation. (2)

b) Give one example of a rational verbalisation. (2)

Answer 5

• Personification of fruit machine – ‘machine likes me’
• Explaining away losses – ‘I lost there because I wasn’t concentrating’
• General swearing/cursing – ‘damn’
• Reference to winning – ‘I won forty pence I think’
• Reference to luck- ‘My lucks in today’

Question 6

6. In the study by Griffiths on gambling,
   a) Identify two dependent variables used to objectively measure skill. (2)

b) For one of these variables state the associated finding. (2)

Answer 6

Any two from the following list of seven: 
•	Total plays 
•	Total time
•	Play rate
•	End stake
•	Wins 
•	Win rate (time)
•	Win rate (plays) 

• Play rate - Regular gamblers had a significantly higher playing rate; 8 gambles per minute as compared to 6 per minute for NRGs
• Win rate (plays) - Regular gamblers who thought aloud had a significantly lower win rate in number of gambles in comparisons to NRGS.