Abstract
Pathological gambling (PG) is characterized by continual repeated gambling behavior despite negative consequences. PG is considered to be a disorder of altered decision-making under risk, and behavioral economics tools were utilized by studies on decision-making under risk. At the same time, PG was suggested to be a heterogeneous disorder in terms of personality traits as well as risk attitude. We aimed to examine the heterogeneity of PG in terms of loss aversion, which means that a loss is subjectively felt to be larger than the same amount of gain. Thirty-one male PG subjects and 26 male healthy control (HC) subjects underwent a behavioral economics task for estimation of loss aversion and personality traits assessment. Although loss aversion in PG subjects was not significantly different from that in HC subjects, distributions of loss aversion differed between PG and HC subjects. HC subjects were uniformly classified into three levels (low, middle, high) of loss aversion, whereas PG subjects were mostly classified into the two extremes, and few PG subjects were classified into the middle range. PG subjects with low and high loss aversion showed a significant difference in anxiety, excitement-seeking and craving intensity. Our study suggested that PG was a heterogeneous disorder in terms of loss aversion. This result might be useful for understanding cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms and the establishment of treatment strategies for PG.
Highlights
Pathological gambling (PG) is a chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by continual repeated gambling behavior despite negative consequences
We aimed to examine the heterogeneity of PG in terms of loss aversion, which means that a loss is subjectively felt to be larger than the same amount of gain
healthy control (HC) subjects were uniformly classified into three levels of loss aversion, whereas PG subjects were mostly classified into the two extremes, and few PG subjects were classified into the middle range
Summary
Pathological gambling (PG) is a chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by continual repeated gambling behavior despite negative consequences. Previous studies investigated a neural substrate (Hsu et al 2009) and a molecular mechanism (Takahashi et al 2010) of this function Another core part of the prospect theory is the value function, which is expressed as a loose, concave slope in a gain area, and a steep, convex slope in a loss area. The susceptibility to loss is stronger than that to gain as, for example, few people try a gamble that has a 50–50 chance of winning and losing the same amount of money This psychological trait is called loss aversion, meaning that a loss is felt to be larger subjectively than the same amount of gain, even if they are objectively equivalent. Previous studies investigating the neural substrate of loss aversion suggested that striatum (Chib et al 2012; Tom et al 2007) and amygdala (De Martino et al 2010) are involved in this phenomenon, and loss aversion is modulated by thalamic norepinephrine transmissions (Takahashi et al 2013)
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