title: Suboptimal foraging behavior: a new perspective on gambling.
abstract: Why do people gamble? Conventional views hold that gambling may be motivated by irrational beliefs, risk-seeking, impulsive temperament, or dysfunction within the same reward circuitry affected by drugs of abuse. An alternate, unexplored perspective is that gambling is an extension of natural foraging behavior to a financial environment. However, when these foraging algorithms are applied to stochastic gambling outcomes, undesirable results may occur. To test this hypothesis, we recruited participants based on their frequency of gambling-yearly (or less), monthly, and weekly-and investigated how gambling frequency related to irrational beliefs, risk-taking/impulsivity, and foraging behavior. We found that increased gambling frequency corresponded to greater gambling-related beliefs, more exploratory choices on an explore/exploit foraging task, and fewer points earned on a Patchy Foraging Task. Gambling-related beliefs negatively related to performance on the Patchy Foraging Task, indicating that individuals with more gambling-related cognitions tended to leave a patch too quickly. This indicates that frequent gamblers have reduced foraging ability to maximize rewards; however, gambling frequency -and by extension, poor foraging ability- was not related to risk-taking or impulsive behavior. These results suggest that gambling reflects the application of a dysfunctional foraging process to financial outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
authors.forename: Merideth A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Addicott
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Duke University.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Pearson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kaiser
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Duke University.
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Platt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
authors.forename: F Joseph
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: McClernon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000523:psychology*; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003469:Culture; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012309:Risk-Taking; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires