Experience, values, beliefs, and the sociocultural context in gambling decision making: A field study of casino blackjack

The study of decision making using gambling-type problems is common among decision researchers in general, as well as among psychologists specifically concerned with understanding gambling behavior and problem gambling. Both groups have focused primarily on the decision makers' cognitive processes to explain their subjects' choices. Yet criticisms suggest that these methods may have inherent limitations specifically because they fail to examine decisions in their real-world contexts. In order to examine the relationship between real-world decision environments and decision-making processes, the current project used participant-observation and interviews to study casino blackjack players in the Las Vegas, Nevada area, in northwestern Indiana, and in Prague, Czech Republic. The project's goals were to document the playing strategies and beliefs common to casino blackjack players, and to examine the role of experience, beliefs, and the sociocultural context in gambling decision making. It involved more than 1.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork as both a blackjack dealer and player and approximately two hundred interviews with gamblers and gambling specialists. The findings suggest that even with relatively well-constrained decision problems, such as gambles, a careful study of the decision-makers' sociocultural context is essential to understanding the decision-making processes.