About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about cognitive biases, focusing in particular on: (i) the function of cognitive biases in gambling addiction being maladaptive biases which reduce the likelihood that the individual will stop gambling, due to their expectation of a win; (ii) the near miss bias, which leads individuals to view losses as almost wins; (iii) the recall bias, which leads individuals to remember only the times that they have won; (iv) the gambler’s fallacy, which leads individuals to believe they are due a win after a series of losses; (v) the addictive combination of the machines’ partial variable reinforcement function and gamblers’ potential cognitive biases.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).