Chasing Losses Leads to Gambling Addiction

The disease model of addiction in instances of chemical dependency has long been recognized by the medical community. Physical dependency on alcohol and drugs is considered a disease, and certain types of people appear to be predisposed to developing an addiction. What has been less clear is whether or not addictions to non-chemical ‘substances’ such as gambling, shopping, and eating have a physical disease component. Do people become physically addicted to gambling, and, if so, are certain people more likely to become compulsive gamblers than others?

One feature of compulsive gambling is ‘loss chasing’. Loss chasing occurs when a gambler continues to gamble in the face of great losses in hopes of winning their money back. While someone who is a moderate, social gambler might quit after losing a certain amount of money, a compulsive gambler will keep going, risking losing much more than they can afford in an effort to recover their losses. Some people seem to have an internal governor that shuts off their desire to gamble, especially when they’re losing. Could there be an internal mechanism that tells most of us when to call it quits? And could some individuals be lacking it?

Researchers at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford wanted to see if there was an actual difference between the brains of those who engaged in “loss chasing” and those who showed constraint when losing money at gambling. They performed functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, on participants who either decided to chase losses or practice restraint to prevent risking further loss.

They found that those who chased losses showed an increase in activity in the cortical areas of the brain, which are linked to incentive motivation and expectation of reward. Those who quit gambling to prevent losing more showed brain activity associated with anxiety and conflict monitoring.

In other words, those who participated in “chasing losses” valued the possible reward of winning over the fear of risk. Those who stopped weighed the risk of losing more over any possible winning.

The researchers who performed the study concluded that compulsive gambling might involve an imbalance of activity in neural systems when confronted with conflicting motivations. While someone who does not compulsively gamble might be able to weigh the pros and cons of continuing to gamble after losing a significant amount of money, the brain of a compulsive gambler appears to be unable to handle this process.

They also believe that the same mechanism could be at play in situations such as compulsive overeating. The individual is unable to weigh in the moment the possible consequences of the risks they’re taking, whether it be with food or gambling.

What does this mean? If there truly is a structural component to addictions such as gambling, researchers may be able to find medical interventions that will aid in the addict’s recovery.

© Copyright 2007 Insight Journal Online Magazine.

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