“… Rational choice theory predicts that people will not gamble, thus it is theorised that regular gamblers gamble because they make the wrong decisions – that cognitive bias (irrational thinking) distorts their reasoning. The aim of this study was to increase understanding of the cognitive processes and behaviour of persistent fruit machine gamblers.” Almost 18 […]
Is a home smoking ban enough to stop teen smoking?
We all know the power of role models and I have written about the effect of role modes on behaviour many times before: from the moving ‘Children See, Children Do‘ campaign to talking about the effectiveness of the pictures of death and destruction that now adorn our fag packets. All these ideas are supported by […]
Smoking Shock Tactics: diseased lungs, rotting teeth and throat cancer.
Graphic pictures of diseased lungs, rotting teeth and throat cancer will be placed on cigarette packets from next week to show the health dangers of smoking. As of next week cigarette packets will no longer have the ‘Smoking Kills’ or ‘Smoking harms you and those around you’ messages on their side but a much stronger […]
Quitting Smoking – A Social Phenomenon?
Could social influence be having a positive effect for once? It’s easy to blame those people around us when we try to rationalise why some take up habits. It’s just easy to say that the behaviour is learned from those around us – social learning theory – who’s behaviour is imitated. I have been one […]
Interview: The gambling man? Prof. Mark Griffiths
You can get the audio to the interview from the new blogcast.psychblog site. Professor Mark Griffiths has been kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time to answer some questions about his research on gambling, his feelings on being included in the new 2008 specification, and what relevance his studies have to […]
Addiction is all the same
Recently there has been a flurry of articles on addiction, the reasons why we become addicted and why do we continue to abuse these substances; be it alcohol, gambling or even love (there was a very interesting article about being addicted to love by Prof Mark Griffiths in a recent Psychology Review – and on […]
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