Locked into gambling: Anticipatory regret as a motivator for playing the National Lottery

Sandy Wolfson, Pamela Briggs

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Four hundred and eighty-five people were asked about their intentions to play the National Lottery in England a week prior to the introduction of a new midweek draw. We predicted that those people who played the Saturday game with a regular set of numbers would be more inclined to play the new midweek game than those who had not established a routine of using the same set of numbers. We further predicted that their motivation to play would derive from a feeling of 'anticipatory regret' - a sense that they would find it intolerable to discover their regular numbers had been drawn when they hadn't purchased a ticket. Results supported both of these predictions, and an interpretation of the data is given in terms of the circumstances most likely to trigger such counterfactual reasoning.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-17
JournalJournal of Gambling Studies
Volume18
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2002

Keywords

  • Anticipatory regret
  • Counterfactual thinking
  • Gambling
  • Lottery

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