Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Differential Probability Discounting Rates of Gamblers in an American Indian Population” by Schneider, T. D.; Gunville, J. A.; Papa, V. B.; Brucks, M. G.; Daley, C. M.; Martin, L. E. and Jarmolowicz, D. P. (2022), in which authors investigate the differential probability discounting rates of pathological gamblers who are part of the native-american population of the United States.
Pathological gambling is a social problem that has always been present, but it seems that it is becoming more and more serious, due to casinos and bookmakers.
In the United States more than 80% of adults participate in some form of gambling each year. It is a pattern that seems particularly widespread among the native Indian population. For example, in 2021, 77% of white Americans participated in gambling, while the figure reached 80.1% for the Native American population.
These differences become even more notable when we consider those who gamble frequently and/or have gambling addiction problems. Specifically, 9.3% of the white American population is within this group, with 1.8% being the percentage of addicts; regarding the Indian population, 12.6% would gamble frequently and 10.5% meet the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling.
One of the reasons for the risk of developing a pathological gambling addiction is that many of them live near casinos. For example, there are approximately 540 tribes of native Indians, and more than 240 offer gambling activities, reaching the number of more than 500 casinos.
In a study on Native American teenagers in seventh through twelfth grade, approximately 75% had participated in some kind of gambling that year, a higher percentage than the national average (45-55%).
It is true that there are significant economic benefits when they allow casinos on their land, but it also carries the risk of unintended problems for this population.
Gambling often involves wagering a small amount of money for a chance to win a larger sum of cash. In behavioral economics, these types of tradeoffs are compared through probability discounting tasks. In these tasks, the subjects have to choose between small but guaranteed and safe sums of money, and larger but uncertain sums of money. For example, a subject can choose between receiving $50 or a 95% chance of receiving $100.
In these games, the probability discount rate would appear through a series of mathematical procedures. The lower the value of this rate, the greater the willingness of players to take risks; the opposite occurs when there is an aversion to risk. In other words, these rates would be a numerical way of quantitatively representing the players most prone to risk behaviors.
Some experts are studying the neurobiological processes that drive pathological gambling. One approach, which is further explained in the original article, advocates using MRI to look at changes in blood oxygenation.
In this study, authors combine this last idea with probability discounting tasks in the Native American population, to try to better understand the risk of developing pathological gambling that this population faces.
12 people who played regularly and 12 people who did not, participated as a control group.
They underwent probability discounting tasks while the MRI was performed.
It was shown how the probability discount rates were indeed lower in people addicted to gambling in relation to people in the control group.
The findings suggest that probability discount rates may be a behavioral process underpinning risk-taking seen in problem gambling.
On the other hand, no major neurobiological differences were observed. Authors point out that the size of the sample was small and it might be necessary to carry out an experiment with more groups to delve into the neurobiological differences between the two.
Authors would also suggest studying auditory stimuli to know their impact on neural activity during decision making in gaming environments.
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