The psychology of the near-miss (revisited): A comment on Delfabbro & Winefield (1999)

Abstract

This paper briefly comments on Delfabbro & Winefield's (1999) paper 'Poker-machine gambling: An analysis of within-session characteristics', published in the British Journal of Psychology, and questions their notion that gambling is maintained by winning and losing sequences within the operant conditioning paradigm (i.e. that the only rewards and reinforcers in gambling are purely monetary). It is argued that Delfabbro and Winefield's contribution is too narrow in its focus in that they have taken no account of the 'near miss' in relation to operant conditioning theory and that there may be other reinforcers that play a role in the maintenance process. It is also argued that gambling is biopsychosocial behaviour, and should therefore be explained by a biopsychosocial account.