Harris Andrew, Parke Adrian, Griffiths Mark D
1International Gaming Research Unit, Psychology Division, Nottingham Trent University, Burton St, Nottingham, NG1 4BU UK.
2School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln, LN6 7TS UK.
Int J Ment Health Addict. 2018;16(2):266-275. doi: 10.1007/s11469-016-9698-7. Epub 2016 Sep 6.
Emotions typically exert powerful, enduring, and often predictable influences over decision-making. However, emotion-based decision-making is seen as a mediator of impulsive and reckless gambling behaviour, where emotion may be seen as the antithesis of controlled and rational decision-making, a proposition supported by recent neuroimaging evidence. The present paper argues that the same emotional mechanisms can be used to influence a gambler to cease gambling, by focusing their emotional decision-making on positive external and personally relevant factors, such as familial impact or longer term financial factors. Emotionally stimulating messages may also have the advantage of capturing attention above and beyond traditionally responsible gambling messaging. This is important given the highly emotionally aroused states often experienced by both gamblers and problem gamblers, where attentional activation thresholds for external stimuli such as messages may be increased.
情绪通常会对决策产生强大、持久且往往可预测的影响。然而，基于情绪的决策被视为冲动和鲁莽赌博行为的一个中介因素，在这种情况下，情绪可能被视为与受控且理性的决策相对立，这一观点得到了近期神经影像学证据的支持。本文认为，通过将赌徒的情绪决策聚焦于积极的外部和个人相关因素，如家庭影响或长期财务因素，同样的情绪机制可被用来促使赌徒停止赌博。情绪刺激性信息可能还具有一个优势，即相较于传统的负责任赌博信息，它更能吸引注意力。鉴于赌徒和问题赌徒常常经历高度情绪唤起状态，在这种状态下，诸如信息之类的外部刺激的注意力激活阈值可能会提高，这一点很重要。
