Attitudes Towards Gambling Behaviour Psychology Essay

Attitudes Towards free rein demeanor Psychology Essay caper has al shipway tended to capture ambiguous views and opinions in society. This project discusses definitions of maneuver, causes, models and treatments for those with shimmer difficultys. The primary info is undisturbed from an online questionnaire which was designed establish on prior question, rough dra raiseg break downicularly from the 2007 British childs play preponderance mass which was conducted in pronounce to cod witnessing abtaboo the fellow travelerable impact of playing period and the costs and benefits. Only 80 actual results were record successfully. The histrions ripen ranged from 17 52 making the mean age 24. The volume of players were feminine with 37.5% universe male and 62.5% being young-bearing(prenominal). referable to the ethnic demographic of the argona being predominantly White British, 81.2% of responses were from White minimises. A 14-item perspective surmount was u se for the chief(prenominal) body of the questionnaire, including 7 coercive statements and 7 negative statements. separately statement was given a score from 1 to 5, 1 being strongly couple and 5 being strongly discord. In order to gather the indemnify data for analysis, the scads of the dogmatic statements was swapped in r foreverse in order to evince the more optimistic offices for individu totallyy item. The 14 items ar man-to-manly scored and added unitedly to create one score. This score is kn hold as the view score. As thither were 14 items and severally rating which was n all agree nor disagree was scored at 3, the mid-point positioning score is 42, any(prenominal)thing down the stairs this suggests an general negative response and anything above thus suggests an all overall positive response. Results base a strong correlation pointing towards a positive attitude towards frolic when the mid-point attitude score is 42, some scores see scores above 42 thusly showing a positive* response. There is lone(prenominal) one item that received an overall negative response.IntroductionThe topic to be addressed in this look into is more or less period of play, the contrastive types and forms and how the public perceive childs play behavior. The explore testament discuss various views and opinions of tender and occupation gaming and draw upon unalike theories as to why hoi polloi try. Other research studies ordain be evaluated in addition.Orford (2009) conducted a survey base study victimisation a 14 item attitude scaled which measures the general attitudes towards shimmer. This scale was originally created to be utilize in a British childs play survey in 2007. This particular survey use a typical sample of 8880 partakers who were over 16 years old. It effectuate that in most cases, attitudes towards turn were negative, the merely exception to these attitudes were from those who gambled the most. What is interest ing around the results of this survey is that more hoi polloi precept childs play to be a foolish and dangerous and to be subtle to families and communities, besides, the majority of participants were against the prohibition of fun. This survey has been the basis for the questionnaire in this study and thitherfore 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 have positive attitudes towards sport. An most other key hypothesis is those who have ever had a gambling puzzle will feel empathy and sympathy towards other line bump of infection takers.Gambling has always tended to capture ambiguous views and opinions in society while drawing in both massive public involvement and an increasing hail of criticism on moral, neighborly and economic grounds (Cornish, 1978).There atomic number 18 many an(prenominal) different types and forms of gambling. The main or most popular forms argon gaming machines betting bingo casino lotteries and pools. Gaming machines allow the role player to recruit in a computerised gamey of break in supervene upon for gold and in some way the other forms of gambling be non dis homogeneous, due to either the supersede of capital 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 luck, however, they atomic number 18 similar to gaming in regards to the exchange of money for chance (Gamble Aw atomic number 18, 2013). Game play therefore is a intelligent way of describing what gambling is, for example, Herman (1976) articulates how gambling clear be understood outstrip through the example of game playing. He uses this instance because game playing is normal and inconspicuously integrated inwardly the rest of gambling shade and society where it mostly occurs. Herman found that a commo n theme among previous research is that gambling is being studied as an activity that is iodind out from the rest of the hearty society and that gambling as an activity is different to other routine activities. On the contrary, it mass be argued that gambling relates to and colligate with other operators of society that it is a product of this society and not separate. thusly game play was a convenient topic for countersign 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 cleverness or chance. This definition includes any form of gambling no progeny how small or insignificant because to a compulsive risk taker, anything can be a trigger to resume their addiction. This definition opens up a bran-new perspective on the term gambling. Routine activities that many of us record in in everyday life may impact a compulsive gamblers life dramatically this suggests that more should be done to sensitively create public awareness not just for ourselves that of those virtually us when gambling.A more in-depth definition and account of gambling is proposed by Perkins (1950), whom offered the idea that gambling could be segmented into 4 factors, the first gear being the swapping of money which takes place without any comparable value the second is the stubbornness 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 a lot, rationally, indispensability to know about the connection between involvement in gambling irrespective of type and the descriptions of gamblers, such as age, sex, well-disposed human body and income. The easiest measures are those where by 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 absolute frequency of gambling, Downes et al (1976) found that there were considerable differences when it came to gender. Men seemed to gamble such(prenominal) more often than women and in particular offspringer men seemed to be more prone to gambling addiction, especially men from upper class and alike, the poor. Downes also explains that younger men are more believably to participate in gambling activity.When it comes to explaining and discussing forms of hassle gambling it is likely that biological, psychological and sociological processes are involved (Lesieur Rosenthal, Pathological gambling A review of the literature, 1991). Each speculation or model of chore gambling is more likely to only highlight one of these processes.There are numerous ways to define enigma and compulsive gamblers. Clinica lly, 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 lead disorder and uses ten conditions to conduct a diagnosis of this disorder. The ten conditions range from repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or obstruction 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 suspect others around them, this could have stemmed from incidents of social or personal trauma, and therefore, they confront away from rendering swear out and instead turn to a circumstantial addictive behaviour as a way of distracting them from this trauma, it is a makesh ift 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 Hoefler Kooyman (1996) that social and personal trauma can be colligate to problem gambling, and that this association would be arbitrated by cognizances of a lack of social support.One well known model of problem gambling is the social breeding model, originating from skinners first (1953) social learning theory. This model assesses gambling as an operant behaviour, meaning a behaviour that can be checked by different consequences and outcomes. Logically, one would assume that in the instance of gambling, money or a prize would be the positive advantage factor to initiate addiction however, more recent research increasing shows the logical implication 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 airs. skinner posited the hypothesis that beginning with success or beginners luck as some would call it, leads to an increase in the probability that that person would continue to argue 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 on research on skinners theory allowed Custer (1984) to test the theory of humans, results showed that the same sit 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 fo r gambling addiction is, the explanation of why the pattern occurs, equable die hards, 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 explanation of this is what is known as the partial reinforcement extinction effect, this is when an absence 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 after a long losing streak is eventually strengthen and consequently strengthened by the most recent win (Griffiths, 1995). other explanation is one that contemplates again the role and idea of arousal. According to browned (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 b rowns 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 (1987) research is not limited to the theory of arousal he also offered the idea that there are as many as sextuplet processes which participate in the development of problem gambling. These six processes are listed accord to (Upfold, 2013)Affective states, like anxiety or depressionCognitive distortions about gamblingBehavioural reinforcement schedulesSocial and institutional determinants, like the fortune to gambleSub heathen conditions, such as the prevailing attitude toward gambling, and the prevailing set of the individuals social context and reference gatherings,AndInternal fantasize relationships with personifications such as lady luck, and the gamblers parents.To give a brief explanati on, a person first has to be presented to gambling to enable the trigger to be able to show up 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 along 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 knotty reason of problem gambling than the fair 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 capitulum it is proposed by Epstein (1994) that gambling is an unconscious attempt to resolve participations within the psyche. C onflicts that exist in the psyche are uncontrollable and it is suggested that gambling is a behaviour runed in order to try to relieve psychological put out and stress.Within this empyrean 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 substitute for pre-genital libidinal/aggressive outlets.Gambling involves an unconscious desire to abide a wish to be punished in reaction to guilt.Gambling is a medium for continued enactment (but not resolution) of psychological conflictRosenthal (1994) proposes that most problem gamblers have narcissistic tendencies, along with regular feelings of desperation and inadequacy which then leads to their psyche constructing a sham world where gambling can be perceived as a solution to their pain. This fictional world enables the gambler to learn feelings o f power, independence and overall, feel in control and important while they gamble. Rosenthal (1994) also comments that the narcissistic tendencies are vulnerable to fluctuate feelings of depression and arousal. It is historied that by take part 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 unrestrained loss such as self-esteem (Upfold, 2013). To sum up the theory of loss, it is that a universal loss is a significant ply 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 being untestable as they are not physical objects or places, they are exclusively theoretical, most of Rosenthals so called evidence was based upon a few class or many individual case studies, therefore cannot be relied upon for ideal scientific research (Cox, Yu, Afifi, Ladouceur, 2005).Granting that the psychodynamic approach isnt reliable in actual research, it is however a good path to look down when thinking about contributions to society, for example, counsellors working 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, thus creating an uncomfortable advocate 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 potentiality 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 lay on the line 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 military commission on Gambling Reform, 2011). Secondly, the more accurately public perception is studied, the higher(prenominal) the likelihood of new therapies and treatments becoming available for those with gambling 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 trance in early intervention tactics to support people who are suffering from severe gambling-related problems. Key to these thoughts and considerations is whether we are able, as professionals, to recognize problem gambling behaviour and or fantastic behaviour in risky gambling situations before people officially seek help or treatment (Delf abbro, 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. a good deal like drug addiction, a major challenge in treating gambling problems is being able to prevent a return. 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 incite positive behaviour and be integrated into everyday life so that i n 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 sacred activities in order to sustain their abstinence. At this point 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 caseistics 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 learned 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 ordinarily seek treatment for their gambling addiction however, more recently, research is determination 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 oscilloscope.There are many methods to treat problem gambling, the methods derive from many approaches such as psychoanalytical/psychodynamic and behavioural 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 ref lecting 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 touch cognition and emotion and turn them into a behaviour (Lesieur Blume, 1987). Although psychodynamic therapies and treatments have not proven to gain effective results, 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 express mailion 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 behav ioural 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 before long used is aversion therapy. This involves a negative stimulus being apply to the persevering while they are thinking about or move in gambling 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 forbearing is mentally stable to agree to it (Epstein, 1994).A second example of a behaviourist treatment is a simple procedure 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 imagine 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 bountiful 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 and easy to create and collect data from. Choosing to conduct this questionnaire online proved to be the right 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 riotous 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 a nd 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 attitudes towards gambling should contain a dear 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 sta tements 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 score is 42, anything below this suggests an overall negative response and anything above therefore suggests an overall positive response.The beat 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 chirrup 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 eliminate social desirability, whereby the participant might purposely give the answers the researcher is looking for, the questionnaire aims were distorted slenderly 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 succeeding(prenominal) part of the questionnaire measured if each participant had a gambling probl em, 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 trouble that gambling had got him into participants were given a list of attitudes 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 well 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 amoun t 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 psychoanalysis and ResultsThe following results present demographic data collected from the primary survey conducted. The data contains the total number of responses returned for all questions and the exemplification contribution 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 case 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 participa nts.Gender modalityFrequencies% Representative priapic3037.5%Female5062.5%Total80100.0%Etiological reports of problem gambling have commonly concentrated on men from Gamblers unnamed (GA) men from the Veterans Administration hospital system (Lesieur Blume, 1987) Therefore, women are diagnostically underrepresented also. Numerous initial studies 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% confused white and shocking Caribbean78.8%Mixed white and black African11.2%Mixed white and Asian00.0% whatsoever other mixed background22.5%Asian indian33.8% Asian Pakistani00.0%Asian Bangladeshi00.0% whatever 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 pickaxe 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