Pathological Gambling A Critical Review (1999) / Chapter Skim
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7: Organization and Technology of Gambling
7: Organization and Technology of Gambling
Pages 237-268
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From page 237... ...
Another perspective examines changes in the social and technological environment surrounding gambling. From this perspective, we can ask whether changes in the organization of the gambling enterprise and technologies of gambling lead to more or fewer pathological or problem gamblers, or to new disorders associated with gambling.
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HISTORY Much of what we know about the effects of earlier changes in the gambling industry and gambling technologies such as the introduction of slot machines and the legalization of casinos in Nevada comes from historical, biographical, and ethnographic narratives (e.g., Chavetz and Simon, 1967; SkoInick, 1978; Thompson, 1986; Fabian, 1990~. This work suggests a close relationship between the social context and technology of gambling, gambling behavior, and social outcomes.
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NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF GAMES A large body of research suggests that today's gambling technologies and venues take advantage of people's normal responses to reward contingencies and to people's cognitive biases, perceptions of risk, and tendency to compartmentalize mental accounts of their expenditures (e.g., Fischhoff et al., 1981; Wagenaar, 1988; Varey et al., 1990; Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Tversky and Kahneman, 1992~. Some authors argue that gambling represents the purchase of an intangible leisure good, like purchasing a ticket to the movies (Vogel, 1994~.
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, this research has been conducted in hypothetical gambling situations or involved small amounts of money (e.g., Wagenaar, 1988~. A few studies report that pathological gamblers say they experienced a jackpot or winning streak early on (e.g., Moran, 1970)
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And many gamblers also believe independent, random events are somehow connected (Ladoucer and Dube, 1997~. People generally have a strong need to impose order or meaning on random processes, and researchers have investigated whether people can generate random sequences of binary events (such as flipping a coin)
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asked those who gambled frequently and infrequently, "Is there any skill involved in playing the slot machine? " Those who gambled infrequently tended to say, "mostly chance," whereas frequent gamblers often said, "equal chance and skill." When asked, "How skillful do you think you are compared with the average person?
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Gamblers' reduced fear with experience may be associated with their tendency to create stories about events and anthropomorphize gambling objects. Gamblers imbue artifacts such as dice, roulette wheels, and slot machines with character, calling out bets as though these random (or uncontrollable)
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Yet it is the wins, especially the big wins, that tend to be remembered, and loses tend to be discounted or forgotten. An important question is whether electronic slots, video poker, and video lottery machines, all of which are spreading rapidly and involve chance-based betting, are more or less harmful than more traditional games, such as racetrack betting and playing poker and blackjack.
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Game Structure The characteristics of game technologies, such as the number of gambles offered per time period, the physical and informational environment of games, game rules, speed of play, probabilistic structure, cost per play, and jackpot size, appear to affect gambling preferences and habits. For instance, repetitive and multiple interactive games can be created in which the gambler's illusions of increasing skill and premonitions of impending luck are encouraged through reward contingencies.
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The behavior of the Oregon and Arizona lottery commissions suggests strongly that lottery organizations mode! one another in devising competitive market strategies; hence changes in the environment of gambling arise from interstate as well as intrastate competition.
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Research on working memory and the consequences of cognitive load suggest that gambling situations with many distractions cause changes in how people make decisions and judgments. Generally, this research shows that multiple conflicting stimuli, multiple calls on attention, and noisy environments cause increases in cognitive load (effort of processing information and using working memory)
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found that opening a telephone betting service reduced racetrack attendance and betting overall. This evidence points to a tentative conclusion that, once people have had access to many gambling options, their gambling expenditures level off and are relatively fixed.
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Because legalization typically increases the advertising of gambling and the openness of people's gambling behavior, the public is increasingly exposed to gambling behavior. Research on social influence shows that people's behavior typically conforms to that of others in the situation, particularly when the behavior is public and unambiguous (Cialdini, 1993~.
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Pathological gamblers may be more likely to remember their parents as having gambled heavily than others would, even if there were no real differences between the two sets of parents. In effect, unless retrospective surveys are very carefully designed and conducted, they cannot determine whether social influence through exposure plays a causal role in pathological gambling.
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EFFECTS OF CHANGING TECHNOLOGY Americans seem to love technology and the products and services made possible by technology. In 1995, people over 18 spent about 3,400 hours watching TV and videos, listening to the radio and recorded music, playing home video games, and reading printed books, newspapers, and magazines (Bureau of the Census, 1997~.
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At the same time, a redistribution of revenue sources occurred across types of gambling. People spent less at the racetrack and on traditional table games and bingo, and more on casinos, lotteries, card rooms, and sports betting.
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Lotteries may attract gamblers who are female, minority, low income, or elderly because they are practically effort-free and do not require risky social behaviors or large investments (Lorenz, 1990~. During the period when legalization and the open marketing of gambling opened large new markets to gambling, technical advances in computing and telecommunications made possible the creation of new automated gambling devices and services, better casino security and policing against cheating, development of remote gambling services, consolidated operations across states and venues, and better collection and use of market data from such information sources as credit ratings, Internet hits, and membership (club card)
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Gambling via cable or satellite television and the Internet provides asocial entertainment and information that could compete with social contact as a way for people to spend their time. Game Machines Several writers have argued that playing computer-based game machines is more likely to lead to pathological gambling than other forms of gambling (e.g., Fisher and Griffiths, 1995; Fabian, 1995~.
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If new game machines such as video poker machines can be tailored to their users, they might be able to deliver more effective reward contingencies. Such an effect could increase the probability of problem gambling.
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Home Gambling Many scholars, technologists, and social critics debate how computer technologies, and the Internet in particular, are transforming economic and social life (e.g., Anderson and Van Der HeijUen, 1998~. It has been posited that home gambling and the Internet may attract adolescent gamblers, or cause people to get addicted to gambling and cut themselves off from normal social constraints on gambling, as they hunker alone over their terminals playing games in electronic casinos or betting with anonymous strangers through chat rooms.
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Empirical work suggests that television-watching reduces social interaction (lackson-Beeck and Robinson, 1981; Neuman, 1991; Maccoby,1951~. At the individual level, social disengagement is associated with poor quality of life and diminished physical and psychological health.
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However, even for the case of television, which has been around for years, we have only a weak causal chain, suggesting that television viewing reduces social involvement or activity which in turn reduces physical and psychological health. The chain for the case of gambling machines and home gambling is even weaker.
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Few if any gambling organizations would be willing to run public experiments on these issues, and even if they did, the link to pathological gambling would be difficult to trace. Field research on the organization and technology of gambling is rare, although there is a body of literature on the effects of legalization, most of which relies on cross-sectional surveys and self-reports of gambling behaviors.
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Bureau of the Census 1997 Estimates for recorded music and video games include persons 12 and older.
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1990 Market niche analysis in the casino gaming industry. journal of Gambling Studies 6:73-85.
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1993 Fruit machine gambling: The importance of structural characteristics. Journal of Gambling Studies 9:133-152.
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1990 The effects of state lotteries on the parimutuel industry. Journal of Gambling Studies 6:331-344.
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Special Issue: Gambling: Philosophy and policy. Journal of Gambling Studies 11(1)
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Carr 1996 Video lottery gambling: Effects on pathological gamblers seeking treatment in South Dakota. Journal of Gambling Studies 12(4)
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Journal of Gambling Studies 11~2~:231-235. Skinner, B.F.
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Kim 1995 Monitoring adolescent and gambling in Minnesota. Journal of Gambling Studies 11:165-183.
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