Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Gent, Belgium.
J Gambl Stud. 2024 Mar;40(1):131-157. doi: 10.1007/s10899-023-10216-z. Epub 2023 Jun 3.
Attempts to obtain rewards are not always successful. Despite investing much time, effort, or money, sometimes individuals may not obtain any reward. Other times they may obtain some reward, but the obtained reward may be smaller than their initial investment, such as partial wins in gambling. It remains unclear how such ambiguous outcomes are appraised. To address this question, we systematically varied the payoffs for different outcomes in a computerized scratch card task across three experiments. To test outcome appraisal, we used response vigor as a novel proxy. In the scratch card task, participants turned three cards one by one. Depending on the turned cards, they either received an amount that was higher than the wager (win), an amount lower than the wager (partial win), or nothing (loss). Overall, participants responded to partial wins more slowly than losses, but more quickly than wins. Partial wins were therefore appraised to be better than losses, but worse than wins. Importantly, further analyses showed that outcome appraisal was not based on the net win or loss amount. Instead, participants primarily used the configuration of turned cards as a cue for the relative rank of an outcome within a specific game. Outcome appraisals thus utilize simple heuristic rules, rely on salient information (such as outcome-related cues in gambling), and are specific to a local context. Together, these factors may contribute to the misperception of partial wins as real wins in gambling. Future work may examine how outcome appraisal may be modulated by the salience of certain information, and investigate the appraisal process in contexts beyond gambling.
尝试获得奖励并不总是成功的。尽管投入了大量的时间、精力或金钱，有时个人可能得不到任何奖励。其他时候，他们可能会得到一些奖励，但得到的奖励可能比他们的初始投资小，例如赌博中的部分胜利。目前还不清楚如何评估这种模棱两可的结果。为了解决这个问题，我们在三个实验中系统地改变了计算机刮刮卡任务中不同结果的回报。为了测试结果评估，我们使用反应力度作为一个新的代理。在刮刮卡任务中，参与者一次翻开三张牌。根据翻开的牌，他们要么收到高于赌注的金额（赢），要么收到低于赌注的金额（部分赢），要么什么都没有（输）。总的来说，参与者对部分胜利的反应比损失更慢，但比胜利更快。因此，部分胜利被评估为比损失好，但比胜利差。重要的是，进一步的分析表明，结果评估不是基于净赢或输的金额。相反，参与者主要将翻开的牌的组合作为一个线索，用于在特定游戏中相对排名的结果。因此，结果评估采用了简单的启发式规则，依赖于明显的信息（例如赌博中的与结果相关的线索），并且特定于局部上下文。这些因素共同导致了人们对部分胜利的错误认知，认为它们是赌博中的真正胜利。未来的工作可能会研究结果评估如何受到某些信息的显著性的影响，并在赌博以外的背景下研究评估过程。
