Diminishing loss sensitivity during risky decision-making among male individuals with gambling disorder.

Background and aims Gambling disorder (GD) poses severe impacts on both individuals and society. Impairment in risky decision-making is a key behavioral characteristic of GD, but the underlying cognitive processes of these deficits remain unclear. Methods A total of 100 male participants with GD and 59 healthy controls were recruited to complete psychological assessments and the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Since GD involved abnormal loss evaluation, we developed a novel cognitive model incorporating diminishing loss sensitivity and revealed the processes underlying the risk-taking behaviors with hierarchical Bayesian analysis. Results Participants with GD exhibited stronger loss aversion (H1 = 50.00, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.325) but faster-diminishing loss sensitivity (H1 = 24.60, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.152), regardless of severity. The faster-diminishing loss sensitivity can explain the deficits in the overall performance of risky decision-making (H1 = 6.79, p = 0.009, η2 = 0.039; β = 206.81, 95% HDI [135.13, 278.49], t93 = 5.66, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.565). Overconfident prior belief (H1 = 8.58, p = 0.003, η2 = 0.050) and higher updating rate (H1 = 7.91, p = 0.005, η2 = 0.049) were observed among participants with GD. Slower diminishing loss sensitivity was negatively correlated with higher non-planning impulsiveness (R = -0.24, p = 0.015). Discussion and Conclusions This research provides novel perspectives on cognitive processes underlying the risky decision-making of GD, highlighting the role of diminishing loss sensitivity during loss evaluation and its clinical implications, which inspire future research on assessment and therapy for GD.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Journal of Behavioral Addictions

• Publication date

  2026-02-16

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1556/2006.2025.00230PMID 41701202
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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