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Foreign Language does not Affect Gambling-Related Judgments

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Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated that peoples’ gambling-related judgments (e.g., perceived likelihood of winning) are often biased by non-diagnostic unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) resulting in non-optimal scratch card preferences. Another line of research suggests that people make less biased decisions (e.g., are less affected by the framing of a gamble) when using a foreign language. In the current study, we investigated whether using a foreign language (as opposed to one’s native language) reduced the biasing effects of unclaimed prize information and consequently led to more optimal scratch card preferences. Across three experiments (N = 409), we found that people were equally biased by unclaimed prize information regardless of whether they completed our scratch card gambling task in their native (Polish) or foreign (English) language. In conclusion, it appears that using a foreign language does not help people be less biased in utilizing gambling-related information, and consequently does not lead to more optimal scratch card preferences.

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Notes

  1. Note however that unclaimed prize information may allow a gambler to avoid purchasing a scratch card in which a desired prize (e.g., a top prize) is no longer available.

  2. Due to technical issues, the data regarding our translation test was not saved. Thus, in Experiment 2, we did not use this test as an exclusion criterion.

  3. Obviously, because these results are by and large consistent with previously reported effects, they should be taken as evidence for the biasing effect of unclaimed prize information. The irregularity on one dependent value should rather be understood in terms of power—the likelihood of observing a true effect in a population given experimental design and sample size. The power is never 100%, and in many published experiments lower than 35% (Bakker et al. 2012). Thus, one should be rather suspicious of multi-study reports that never fail to observe an effect rather than multi-study reports with some inconsistencies in observing an effect (Schimmack 2012).

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Acknowledgements

The current project was financed by the resources of Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under Grant PRELUDIUM 2018/29/N/HS6/02058 assigned to RM. Work done by MB was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland (NCN) under Grant SONATA 2017/26/D/HS6/01159. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Rafał Muda and Alexander C. Walker have equal contribution.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

    Rafał Muda & Damian Pieńkosz

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Alexander C. Walker & Jonathan A. Fugelsang

  3. Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland

    Michał Białek

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  1. Rafał Muda
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  2. Alexander C. Walker
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  3. Damian Pieńkosz
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  4. Jonathan A. Fugelsang
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  5. Michał Białek
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Correspondence to Alexander C. Walker.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Waterloo Office of Research Ethics and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Muda, R., Walker, A.C., Pieńkosz, D. et al. Foreign Language does not Affect Gambling-Related Judgments. J Gambl Stud 36, 633–652 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-020-09933-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-020-09933-6

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