- Title
- Cognitive distortions among older adult gamblers in an Asian context
- Creator
- Subramaniam, Mythily; Chong, Siow; Browning, Colette; Thomas, Shane
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/178226
- Identifier
- vital:15388
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178036
- Identifier
- ISBN:1932-6203 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- Aims: The study aims to describe the construct of cognitive distortions based on the narratives of older adult gamblers (aged 60 years and above) in Singapore. Methods: Singapore residents (citizens or permanent residents) aged 60 years and above, who were current or past regular gamblers were included in the study. Participants were recruited using a combination of venue based approach, referrals from service providers as well as by snowball sampling. In all, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with older adult gamblers. The six-step thematic network analysis methodology was adopted for data analysis. Results: The mean age of the participants was 66.2 years. The majority were male (n = 18), of Chinese ethnicity (n = 16), with a mean age of gambling initiation at 24.5 years. Among older adult gamblers, cognitive distortions emerged as a significant global theme comprising three organizing themes-illusion of control, probability control and interpretive control. The organizing themes comprised nine basic themes: perception of gambling as a skill, near miss, concept of luck, superstitious beliefs, entrapment, gambler's fallacy, chasing wins, chasing losses, and beliefs that wins are more than losses. Conclusions: Cognitive distortions were endorsed by all gamblers in the current study and were shown to play a role in both maintaining and escalating the gambling behaviour. While the surface characteristics of the distortions had a culture-specific appearance, the deeper characteristics of the distortions may in fact be more universal than previously thought. Future research must include longitudinal studies to understand causal relationships between cognitive distortions and gambling as well as the role of culture-specific distortions both in the maintenance and treatment of the disorder. © 2017 Subramaniam et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science
- Relation
- PLoS ONE Vol. 12, no. 5 (2017), p.
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright © 2017 Subramaniam et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- MD Multidisciplinary
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Funder
- Funding for this study was provided by Ministry of Health, National Medical Research Council (NMRC), Research Training Fellowship Grant (MH 095:003/008-1019). The first author (MS) was awarded a fellowship under the grant as well as from the funding by Centre Grant Programme (Grant No.: NMRC/CG/004/2013). NMRC had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.
- Hits: 407
- Visitors: 475
- Downloads: 102
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Published version | 905 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |