What's your favourite colour? Red, blue, orange, purple? In truth, it could well be anything from the spectrum. You know, I'm sure if George Orwell had been looking at colour charts instead of writing Animal Farm he would have made this famous quote: ''All colours are equal, but some are more equal than others.''
This chair I'm sitting feels a little hard. As I'm getting on in years (joke) perhaps I should give a comfy rocker a test drive. That's a rocking chair not an affluent, long-haired bloke with an electric guitar. That deck chair on the beach looks inviting. The sound of the sea, gulls calling... peace and harmony. The perfect situation to take your phone from your pocket and place a bet.
Did you realise that we are living in an age of unconscious influence? I'm sure from reading our articles you appreciate that all is not what it seems with what we consider freewill. However, is this reality of choice all but an illusion? In truth, that is quite a frightening thought although we would probably be unaware of its implications. It is only upon reading such articles that we would even question.
Psychology - its use as a tool for advantage - is a hot topic and a subject which is likely to have
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| 10 FAVOURITES |
When you make a decision it seems natural to think you have weighed up all the factors. Let's say you considered a bet. You think the horse has winning form. It likes the ground. Good jockey. The price is better than you thought and looks value.
Job done.
Well, that's the logic, hey.
It's impossible to live among other people and not be influenced by them in some way. Sometimes, others attempts to change our thoughts or behaviour are obvious, such as a policeman telling you to pull over as you drive down the street. However, on other occasions social influence is less direct. Sometimes the mere
Research in the field of social cognition suggests that priming may considerably influence our behaviour. Primes may influence our mood and behaviour without us being aware of them. Bargh et al. (1996) asked participants to arrange lists of words to form meaningful sentences. In the experimental group, each word list contained a word related to
Cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999) revealed how people can focus so hard on something that they become blind to the unexpected, even when staring right at it! ''Inattentional blindness'' illustrates how easy we miss details when we are not looking out for them. This classic study asked participants to focus
So it's a close call between your favourite teams playing at the weekend. In fact, you can't pick between them. But from a psychological perspective, what can we learn from such a choice? Well, Shafir (1993) has shown that choosing one of two things is not the complement of rejecting one of the two things. Sometimes when deciding between two options, people both select and reject the same option. When we are trying to select an option we tend to focus on positive features and when we are looking for reasons to reject we tend to focus on negative. Thus, positive features will be selected over negative. However, failing to resolve conflict can also be revealing. The economist, Thomas Schelling, tells of an
So what's your selection? You know, to even contemplate such a task takes considerable knowledge, let alone successfully finding the winner! But wait a minute. How come my mate Joe seems to be ahead of the game? In fact, he seems to have the bookies on the back foot. He's been banned by many. I guess you could call him a professional gambler. But is there a difference
Gambler's Psychology Kit is about two subjects: gambling & psychology. What better way to inspire, question & debate enquiring minds than these ''10 Killer Quotes''.
''The more you know, the less you need to think'' (Greene, 1987)
"He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." (Mark Twain)
''At first the confusion was total and very frightening to him. Once he held a chocolate in the palm of one hand, covered it with the other for a few seconds until its image disappeared from his memory. When he uncovered it, he thought he had performed a magic trick, conjured it up from
Take a moment and think back to one of your most memorable race days. It could have been a favourite horse, a winning bet or a day when everything you touched turned to gold. Now consider this...is that memory retrieved from a period when you were aged 10 to 30 years? This phenomenon is known by psychologists as the reminiscence bump. It is distinguished by an increase in recall of memories relative to
I know it's illogical but I've cracked it! After hours of practice I am confident I have increased my chance of throwing double six. It's a great little system: the harder I throw the dice the higher the score; slower then lower numbers appear. It works like magic. I can't wait to get down the casino & clean up. Well, that's what some
Studying compulsive gamblers who were seeking treatment at the National Problem Gambling Clinic, the researchers found that those gamblers with higher levels of impulsivity were much more susceptible to errors in reasoning associated with gambling, such as superstitious rituals (e.g. carrying a lucky charm) and explaining away recent losses (e.g. on bad luck or 'cold'
Bookies rely on emotion to fill their coffers. Think about the big race meeting for example the pageantry, the noise, the carnival atmosphere. Do you think that this evolved by accident? It’s all engendered to create a mob mentality, to get people going with the flow. Logical methodical thought is the bookies enemy. Someone who is having a good
During my relatively short blackjack career of almost two years, I’ve enjoyed some euphoric winning streaks and disastrous losing streaks. Like most players, I take the winning streaks in stride -- of course I won, isn’t that the idea? The losing streaks, on the other hand, are much more difficult to handle. Extended losing streaks can be disappointing, debilitating, and downright depressing, no matter how sure you are that you were playing with an advantage. With experience, the inevitable swings
I can't say I'm the greatest chess player. In fact I imagine most school children with a passion for the game would find me an easy opponent. However, I find the psychology of chess quite informative because I can see a distinct relationship between it and the psychology of gambling in that much of betting is about noticing familiar patterns. Over the years, this factor has registered with me many times as each new two-year-old season in ways is
Motivation, in psychology, the intention of achieving a goal, leading to goal-directed behaviour. Some human activity seems to be best explained by postulating an inner directing drive. While a drive is often considered to be an innate biological mechanism that determines the organism's activity (instinct), a motive is defined as an innate mechanism modified by learning.
An article from Dr Richard Friedman regarding self defeating behaviour and how people sabotage their own success. This makes interesting reading from a gambling perspective. For some gamblers perhaps their failure is down to an affective self-serving mechanism. At a lower level this article makes a valid point to analyse our thinking processes when making a wager.
As I suggested at the time, most research has been of a clinical underpinning investigating the psychopathology of gambling addiction. However, few areas of research have been specifically conducted about gambling psychology in terms of how this knowledge may be used as a tool of advantage. It is interesting to consider stereotypical behaviour or fixed-action patterns which social psychological research has
I have been reviewing more social psychology research, specifically social influence with regard to how differing factors manipulate our gambling behaviour. My last article: 'I followed that horse off a cliff' highlighted how we may be assigned to a troubled path because consistency and commitment may negatively influence
I have been reviewing more social psychology research, specifically social influence with regard to how differing factors manipulate our gambling behaviour. My last article: 'I followed that horse off a cliff' highlighted how we may be assigned to a troubled path because consistency and commitment may negatively influence