The Bounded Ending Effect in the Domain of Football Gambling: High Risks Are Not Always Preferred at the End

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals present increased risk taking at the end of a series of gambles, a phenomenon called the ending effect. By using a large online football gambling data, we attempted to replicate the ending effect and tested the existence of a different pattern of increased risk taking at the ending. The results showed that at the end of a series of football gambles, bettors would take more risks, and options with lower risk would be preferred. In games without the interference of local bettors, the ending effect was found to be stronger than that of games with local bettors. Overall, the results provide evidence for the bounded ending effect. Possible underlying mechanisms of the bounded ending effect are explored.

Age Effects in Sequence-Construction for a Continuous Cognitive Task: Similar Sequence-Trends but Fewer Switch-Points

OBJECTIVES

Many real-life settings require decision makers to sort a predetermined set of outcomes or activities into a preferred sequence and people vary in whether they prefer to tackle the most challenging aspects first, leave them for the last, or intersperse them with less challenging outcomes. Prior research on age differences in sequence-preferences has focused on discrete and hypothetical events. The present study expands this work by examining sequence-preferences for a realistic, continuous, sustained, and cognitively challenging task.

METHODS

Participants (N = 121, aged 21-86) were asked to complete 10 min of a difficult cognitive task (2-back), 10 min of an easy cognitive task (1-back), and 10 min of rest over the course of a 30-min interval. They could complete the tasks in any order and switch tasks as often as they wished and they were rewarded for correct performance. Additional measures included affective and physiological responses, task accuracy, time-perspective, and demographics.

RESULTS

The majority of participants constructed sequences with decreasing task difficulty. Preferences for the general trend of the sequence were not significantly related to age, but the number of switches among the tasks decreased with age, and task-switching tended to incur greater accuracy decrements among older as compared to younger adults.

DISCUSSION

We address potential methodological concerns, discuss theoretical implications, and consider potential real-life applications.