Risk Decision and Social Comparison in Gambling among Non-gamblers and Gambling Disorder Patients

Previous studies have supported the view that gambling disorder is associated with impaired decision-making. While scholars try to explain it through neurobiological approaches, this study aims to investigate different explanations from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Our research will mainly focus on the underlying malfunction of risk sensitivity mechanism and effect of social comparison. Participants consist of non-disordered people and gambling disorder patients selected from volunteers and patients from hospital. There are two different situations (visible and invisible) to identify the impact of social comparison. Participants are supposed to choose different risk levels to get higher scores. The expected result of this experiment will be under the combined influence of the mechanism malfunction and social comparison. For gambling disorder patients, the malfunction of risk sensitivity mechanism will lead to an extreme preference for high risk and scores, while non-gamblers will stop or choose a low risk level after obtaining enough or a high score. Affected by social comparison, both kinds of participants will manifest a tendency for higher risk. This study will contribute to explaining differential performance between individuals with gambling disorders and non-gamblers in the gambling scenario through the theory of evolutionary psychology.