Cognitive Disorders In Pathological Players

Cognitive distortions are common in healthcare, and when we talk about e.g. disorders in pathological players are even more important, because it is precisely these distortions that can form the basis of addiction.

Gambling is one of the most primitive activities in human history. You can find the names of famous people who were obsessed with gambling when you go through the history books.

Emperor Claudius, and Giacomo Casanova and the great writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky are just a few examples.

However, it was not until 1980 that gambling began to become more relevant, as it became clear that it could lead to serious problems. That’s when they started including it in the DSM-III as a diagnostic category.

Diagnosis

When we talk about pathological gambling, we mean about games that are based on chance. Computer games therefore do not fall into this category, although that does not mean that these players cannot become addicted either.

You can use the diagnostic manuals to recognize a pathological player by seeing if the person loses control of the game.

The person will continue to play even when he has become aware of the negative consequences.

Pathological gambling is no longer classified as a lack of impulse control but is now categorized as an addiction disorder according to the DSM-5. The reason for this is that the disease is reminiscent of an addiction.

As a person cannot resist the temptation to play, this will often have a major negative impact on both family life and work life.

Cognitive distortion in pathological players

Pathological players have certain irrational perceptions and cognitive disturbances in their minds that can make them addicted to gambling.

Cognitive disorders are not necessarily pathological because we all have them to a greater or lesser degree. A person should instead modify them if they are too frequent and make sure they do not get worse.

The typical disorders that pathological players experience are:

• The illusion of control. This is the perception that the game’s results depend more on the activity itself than on chance. The person really believes that he can control the game and its results. A pathological player may think that “I have an absolutely perfect method to be able to win”. The person will continue to believe in it and thus continue to play.
• Fixation in absolute events. A player measures his success in a game by looking at what he has won while not looking at what he has lost. It is common for a player to lose much more than he wins. This illusion makes the person more rooted in the addiction.

• Misconception of correlation. The person associates a certain event with a certain behavior and a price. The player then begins to believe that the behavior increases the chances of winning. This is reminiscent of when someone is wearing an amulet or performing a specific ritual. It is of course a magical thought for a pathological player can not control his gains or losses. An example of this disorder could be: “If I kiss my dice twice before throwing it, I will win”.
• Machine personification. Some risk takers may think things like “The machine is fooling me, it wants to confuse me, but it will not succeed because I am smarter”.

How to help pathological players

The first step in overcoming cognitive disturbances is to let the player notice this disturbance. Cognitive disorders are not easy to detect because they have been programmed for a long time.

One way to detect them is by asking a player to fill in some form of self-registration document when he feels the need to play.

If you explain it correctly and the person performs the task correctly, he will become aware of his cognitive disorders.

To do this, you can show them the cognitive distortions that players often suffer from and see which of these he can recognize himself among.

When you do this, the person must understand that such cognitive disorders are behind the motivation to continue playing.

If you are to be able to modify disorders in pathological players, it is important that you question and replace them with thoughts based on objectivity and reality.

It can be achieved with the help of Socratic reasoning and guiding discoveries.

A person will here question himself what evidence he has to maintain a certain thought, such as:

Final comments concerning pathological players

After practicing Socratic reasoning and the person has noticed how erroneous the original views are, he will be more inclined to change his mindset.

To do this, the person must go through all the questions asked and arrive at rational answers.

He will now be able to have mental mantras, such as “I have no control over a machine that gives random results”, “I have won sometimes but the information indicates that I have lost much more.”

With a little practice, the player will become aware of his behavior. He will realize that the problem only creates new problems. Eventually, the player will lose interest and stop playing.