Gambling from a Learning Perspective - Research Paper Example

The commonest forms of sports betting include Baseball, NBA, NFK, Soccer, and horserace. Sports betting also comes in different forms including online betting and sports betting. Most sports betting requires gamblers to predict events and scores of sporting activities. For example, someone may bet on the first team to commit a foul, concede a goal, or win the match. Betting is done by paying money and people whose predictions come true are rewarded with prizes, which are mostly money. Those whose predictions fail lose their betting fee and this is where the gambling aspect comes in.

Gambling from a learning perspective
Gambling and for that matter sports betting can be taken from a learning perspective. As far as learning perspectives are concerned, previous researchers have done a lot of work on the social learning perspective of gambling. Ormrod (1999) notes that social learning theory “considers that people learn from one another, including such concepts as observational learning, imitation, and modeling.” Concerning the social learning perspective, the behavior of gamblers whereby they base their predictions on observations of the performance of teams can be described as an act of learning. There is a second component of learning perspective where gamblers make predictions based on trial and error. Referring to social learning theories under which trial and error fall, Northwestern psychologist Donald Campbell refers to these as acquired behavioral dispositions (McGraw-Hill Online, 2011). The hopes of sports gamblers who use trial and error have been that as they keep trying predictions based on no authentic reasons, their predictions would along the way come true.

The framework of schedules of reinforcement in sports betting
Schedules of reinforcement are especially important in the learning process when dealing with operant conditioning (Cherry, 2011). Concerning gambling, fixed-interval schedule and fixed-ratio schedule is very paramount. With a fixed-ratio schedule, there is the production of a high, steady rate of responding with only a brief pause after the delivery of the reinforcer (Cherry, 2011). In sports betting gamblers behave this way when the winning prizes are very lucrative and enticing. The fixed-interval schedule also occurs when there is a much slower response immediately after the delivery of the reinforcer (Cherry, 2011). This category of sports gamblers is those who would be lured by previous wins to continue to gamble more.

Gambling in the Context of classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is learning by association. For this reason, Changing Minds Organization (2011) explains that “If a stimulus that results in an emotional response is repeated alongside another stimulus which does not cause an emotional response, eventually the second stimulus will result in the same emotional response.” Stimulus and response are therefore very influential in gambling especially as Skinner B. F. relates the learning experience in gambling to classical conditioning. With stimuli and response, gamblers begin their conditioning with the unconditional stimuli – unconditional response (UCS, UCR) level before they graduate to conditional stimuli – conditional response level. Read More