The Brief Addiction Science Information Source (BASIS)

The WAGER Vol. 9(26) - It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Best of Times: Gambling and Self-Deception… A Tale of Two Selves?

Researchers often use the concept of self-deception to explain irrational and maladaptive human behavior; however, it has a long and muddled history in psychological science. Controversies over the definition, level of consciousness, and value of self-deception arise from the paradoxical nature of the word itself and have relegated self-deception to the list of topics few psychologists dare to adopt. Nevertheless, self-deception has a clear application to the addictions because of its relation to decision-making, denial, and belief perseverance. Peterson et al. (2003) sidestep the debates over how a single self can hold two conflicting beliefs or how one part of... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 9(25) - What’s Underneath? The Role of Negative Affect in the Tobacco/Gambling Link

In countless movies, paintings, and in many casinos, smoking and gambling seem to go hand in hand. This might seem like a mere aesthetic coincidence, but researchers have found that there is a link between problem gambling and smoking. For example, a past WAGER (8(5)) discussed a study by Petry & Oncken (2002) that found the smoking rate among people in treatment for problem gambling to be significantly higher than in the general population. Their results even show that daily smokers tend to have more severe gambling problems than non-daily smokers. This week’s WAGER presents the results of a study... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 9(24) - Reasons for Leaving Gambling Treatment

Patient retention is a goal of both physical and mental health treatment providers. Recent research reports that disordered gambling treatment providers experience patient drop-out rates between 40% and 80% (Grant, Kim, & Kuskowski, 2004). Although treatment providers have come to expect that a certain proportion of their patients will drop-out, little is known about how such drop-out rates might be prevented. This week the WAGER reviews new research by Grant and his colleagues (2004), which asked drop-outs why they left before completing a gambling treatment program. The authors defined a study cohort of 50 adult outpatients in the principal author’s... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 9(23) - A Primer on Priming: Betting on the Fast Track

Imagine catching a whiff of fresh-baked cookies. Whether the cookies you smell are oatmeal or sugar or chocolate, that whiff can set off a craving for your favorite cookie variety. This phenomenon of a small taste inducing a craving for a similar substance is known in the addictions as priming. In fact, priming drug users with a similar drug to their drug of choice (e.g., priming regular cocaine users with another stimulant such as amphetamines) produces drug-seeking or drug-taking of their chosen drug. This week’s WAGER reviews a paper by Zack and Poulos (2004) that tests whether this priming effect... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 9(22) - To Trust or Not to Trust: Gamblers and Retrospective Recall

Several recent WAGERs (e.g., WAGERs 9(13) and 9(17)) noted that self-report might limit research on pathological gambling. It is not uncommon for people to report faulty data due to recall biases and the desire to make a positive impression on others: two conditions that could significantly alter results. However, few studies have empirically tested the widely-held assumption that retrospective recall of gambling behavior and outcomes yields faulty data. This week’s WAGER presents the results of a recent study by Hodgins and Makarchuk (2003) that examined the reliability of several samples of problem gamblers’ recall of their own gambling behavior, and... Read more →