The Gambler's Fallacy, Questions And Answers

On an everyday basis, humans are faced with scenarios and problems that require critical decision-making skills. However, decisions are not always made based on supportive evidence or an abundance of information. A key concept that will be thoroughly analyzed and discussed is the gambler’s fallacy, and how it corresponds with the study conducted by Roney and Trick (2003). As stated by in the textbook, “The gambler’s fallacy is the belief that if an event has not occurred for a while, then it is more likely, by the “law of averages,” to occur in the near future” (Anderson, 2015, p.269). Therefore, an individual subjected to the gambler’s fallacy will believe that the next coin toss will land on heads if the previous five tosses were tails since heads hasn’t occurred in a while. The
Each time an individual flips a coin, there is a 50% probability that the coin will land on heads. In addition, there is a 50% probability that the coin will land on tails. Therefore, the result of each coin flip is not affected by the previous coin flip because the probability is still 50% for each side. Due to the law of averages, people would expect there to be an even amount of head and tail tosses, such as three heads and three tails out of six tosses. As mentioned by Tversky and Kahneman (1994) in a research article regarding the gambler’s fallacy, people believe there is a self- in which a deviation in heads induces a deviation in tails (As cited in Sun & Wang, 2010, p.124). Therefore, unlike the hot hand belief in which individuals would determine a continuation, participants in the gambler’s fallacy would detect a reversal despite the 50% probability of heads or tails occurring (Sun & Wang, 2010, p.125). The gambler’s fallacy is a fascinating concept in cognitive psychology which has become a center of attention in human’s decision-making