Received: 2 February 2018

| Revised: 26 November 2018

| Accepted: 21 December 2018

DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13338

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Detailed analysis of skin conductance responses during a

gambling task: Decision, anticipation, and outcomes

Thomas Agren1 | Philip Millroth1 | Peter Andersson1 | Måns Ridzén1 |

Johannes Björkstrand1,2,3

1
Department of Psychology, Uppsala
University, Uppsala, Sweden
2
Neurobiology Research Unit,
Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark
3
Department of Psychology, Lund
University, Lund, Sweden
Correspondence
Thomas Agren, Department of Psychology,
Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE‐751 42
Uppsala, Sweden.
Email: thomas.agren@psyk.uu.se
Funding information
Swedish Research Council, Sasakawa
Young Leader Fellowship fund
Abstract
Physiological arousal is considered a key factor of gambling behavior. Hence, to
understand gambling behavior it is important to study the arousal responses during
gambling. Moreover, crucial mechanisms of action could be uncovered by detailing
the situations that produce an arousal response. A gamble, or bet, can be partitioned
into three distinct phases: (a) decision phase, during which the information concern-
ing the gamble is presented, outcomes are appraised, and a decision is made on how
to gamble; (b) anticipation phase, during which the result of the gamble is awaited;
(c) outcome phase, during which the outcome of the gamble is presented. Previous
research on arousal responses to gambling have mostly measured tonic changes in
arousal, and when phasic responses have been measured, analyses have generally
concentrated on one of the gamble phases. The aim of the present study was to map
the arousal responses during gambling in more detail by measuring skin conductance
responses (SCRs) during all three gamble phases of a simple card game. The antici-
pation phase was found to produce the largest arousal response, suggesting anticipa-
tion to be a major contributor to arousal during gambling behavior. Risk behavior
during the gambling task was mirrored in self‐reported risk taking in everyday life,
and risk‐takers displayed smaller SCRs compared to nonrisk‐takers during decision
making, suggesting this as a possible biomarker for risk‐taking individuals.

KEYWORDS
decision making, gambling, psychophysiology, risk, skin conductance

1 | IN T RO D U C T ION 1986). Data also support the involvement of arousal in prob-

Physiological arousal, the activation of the sympathetic ner-
vous system and the endocrine system in order to facilitate an
activated state (e.g., a racing heart), is considered a vital rein-
forcement for gambling behavior in many influential psycho-
logical theories of problem gambling (Blaszczynski & Nower,
2002; Brown, 1986; Sharpe, 2002). However, there is no real
consensus regarding the exact involvement of arousal. For ex-
ample, it has been suggested that problem gamblers (PGs) are
hyperaroused to wins (Sharpe, 2002) or that they compensate
from general hypoarousal with gambling behavior (Brown,
lem gambling behavior. For example, an induced arousal state
can affect gambling behavior, producing more risk taking if
it is accompanied by positive emotions (Rockloff & Greer,
2010). Moreover, PGs generally report heightened arousal to
gambling (Baudinet & Blaszczynski, 2013), but the physio-
logical data paint a less clear picture. Although many stud-
ies have found increased physiological arousal in PGs (see
Goudriaan, Oosterlaan, de Beurs, & van den Brink, 2006, for
a review), there have recently emerged several studies that
don’t (see Baudinet & Blaszczynski, 2013). Complicating
matters further, the majority of psychophysiological research

Psychophysiology. 2019;e13338. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/psyp © 2019 Society for Psychophysiological Research | 1 of 10

https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13338
2 of 10
|    AGREN et al.
on gambling has measured tonic changes in arousal, where
measures have been averaged over a long period of time,
often several minutes, spanning over many trials.
When measures are averaged over a long period of time,
the arousal response to individual trials, such as wins and
losses, and different phases of gambling, such as decision
making and gamble outcomes, cannot be identified (see Lole,
Gonsalvez, Blaszczynski, & Clarke, 2012, for further discus-
sion of tonic vs. phasic measures). In fact, tonic measures of
arousal should actively exclude the phasic responses to stim-
uli (Boucsein, 2014) and hence are best used as a measure of
a general arousal state, which in turn can be affected by the
same stimuli that give rise to phasic responses. This means
that relying on tonic measurements in gambling studies is
problematic, because the physiological arousal response
during gambling is affected by several processes that should
not be entangled (such as decision making and responses to
outcomes). Hence, in order to provide a detailed description
of the arousal responses to gambling, phasic responses must
be measured.
For clarity, the procedure where a person makes a single
bet and receives a gamble outcome is hereby called a gam-
ble trial. Most gamble trials can be partitioned into three
distinct phases: (a) decision phase, during which the partic-
ipant is presented with a gambling choice and appraises the
outcomes; (b) anticipation phase, during which the partici-
pant waits for the outcome; and (c) outcome phase, during
which the participant is presented with the outcome. In order
to understand which gambling situations produce an arousal
response, and arguably contribute to a state of high arousal
during gambling, all of these phases should be studied in
detail. Yet, as outlined below, most research has focused on
only one phase at a time.
1.1 | Previous research on the decision,
anticipation, and outcome phases
Regarding the decision phase, emotional arousal has been
linked to the decision‐making process of risky choices. This
has mainly been demonstrated using the Iowa gambling
task (IGT), an experimental procedure in which a subject is
asked to draw cards from four decks, of which two decks are
­advantageous and produce a net profit, while the other two
are disadvantageous, producing a net loss. In the IGT, greater
skin conductance responses (SCRs) are observed when sub-
jects draw cards from disadvantageous decks, as compared
to advantageous decks (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, &
Anderson, 1994). This pattern of results has been explained
using the somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1996), which
states that affect‐related bodily states associated to a stimulus
(somatic markers) will affect decision making involving that
stimulus. From this perspective, the elevated SCRs accom-
panying the decision to draw from disadvantageous decks
indicate the presence of somatic markers signaling risky
behavior related to the magnitude of future loss (Damasio,
1996). These markers are presumed missing, or weaker, in
subgroups that do not seem to learn which decks are advanta-
geous, such as patients with lesions to the ventromedial pre-
frontal cortex, substance‐dependent individuals, and PGs. In
these populations, the decision of drawing from a disadvanta-
geous deck does not show elevated SCRs; in fact, SCRs are
sometimes decreased (Bechara & Damasio, 2002; Brevers,
Bechara, Cleeremans, & Noël, 2013).
Evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis is mixed.
There are alternative explanations to results produced by
the IGT, for example, that the elevated SCRs reflect the
increased variance of reward and punishment of the disad-
vantageous decks (Tomb, Hauser, Deldin, & Caramazza,
2002). Moreover, emerging results suggest that the elevated
SCRs found when drawing from disadvantageous decks may
not precede declarative knowledge of the deck contingen-
cies, removing the need for nonconscious somatic markers
(Maia & McClelland, 2004). However, the psychophysio-
logical ­results from the IGT, showing increased SCRs when
drawing from disadvantageous decks, seem reliable (Dunn,
Dalgleish, & Lawrence, 2006) and show that the arousal
response during decision making may identify individuals
with abnormal decision making. In line with these results,
when separating healthy controls into bad, moderate, and
good performers of the IGT, bad performers did not show
elevated SCRs when choosing from disadvantageous decks, a
discrimination that was found in moderate and good perform-
ers (Crone, Somsen, Van Beek, & Van Der Molen, 2004).
Taken together, the results produced by the IGT show that de-
cision making ­involving risk has an arousal component that
can be measured with skin conductance. These findings also
indicate that the arousal component of risky decisions may
characterize PGs or possibly influence the risk of becoming
a problem gambler. In spite of this, few studies examining
phasic activity of gambling behavior have considered the de-
cision phase of a gamble trial.
The studies on gambling that have measured phasic SCRs
have mainly been concerned with the outcome phase. Lole
et al. (2012) had healthy controls play an electronic gam-
bling machine (EGM) task, designed to produce outcomes
(wins, near wins, and losses) at the same rate as a commercial
EGM. SCRs to wins were larger than to losses, and wins of
larger amounts produced larger SCRs than wins of smaller
amounts (Lole et al., 2012). These results were mirrored in
the results from a similar study using a commercial EGM
(Wilkes, Gonsalvez, & Blaszczynski, 2010). Another study,
comparing problem gamblers with nonproblem gamblers,
­revealed that PGs had a decreased SCR to wins, compared
with nonproblem gamblers, but responses to losses did not
differ (Lole, Gonsalvez, Barry, & Blaszczynski, 2014). The
authors argued that PGs may be hyposensitive to reward,
AGREN et al.
which is in line with the theory that PGs are using gambling
to compensate for this deficit (Brown, 1986).
In a gambling task where probabilities for decisions were
stated outright by coloring a corresponding part of an image of
a roulette wheel, subjects actively chose the bet size in half of
the trials, and the computer chose the bet size in the other half.
Larger SCRs were found to decisions when subjects actively
chose the bet size. Moreover, larger SCRs were found to deci-
sions of higher bets as compared to lower, and to the outcome
of high bet losses as compared to low bet losses (Studer &
Clark, 2011). Another study, using the same task, found that
SCRs during the decision of active choice trials depended on
the chance of winning, comparing a 40% and 80% chance of
winning, so that SCRs to the decisions i­ncreased with the
chance of winning (Studer, Scheibehenne, & Clark, 2016).
1.2 | The present study: Aims,
hypotheses, and experimental setup
Influential theories argue that the arousal response is vital for
gambling behavior. If so, then crucial mechanisms of action
can be uncovered by detailing the situations in gambling that
produce an arousal response. This could identify target meas-
ures for further study in PGs or other groups with abnormal
decision making. Hence, the main aim of the present study
was to examine the physiological arousal responses during a
gamble procedure and, specifically, to examine if any of the
gamble phases contributed a larger arousal response than the
others. To this aim, we designed a gambling task in which
the participant is presented with a card from a standard deck
of playing cards and then has to bet on whether the next card
will be of higher or lower rank than the presented card. While
playing this game, the subject’s phasic arousal responses to
the decision, anticipation, and outcome phases of the gamble
trials were continually measured using SCRs.
Since previous research has not directly compared the
gamble phases, we had no clear hypothesis regarding which,
if any, of the phases that would differ. However, since it has
been found that arousal response to a decision depends on
the risk involved (Bechara et al., 1994; Bechara & Damasio,
2002; Brevers et al., 2013; Crone et al., 2004), we found it
necessary to cover for the possibility that the degree of risk
may interact with phase (decision, anticipation, outcome).
Thus, gamble trials were categorized according to risk taken
during the decision (uncertain decisions, risky decisions, safe
decisions), and decision type was included in the analysis.
Apart from the main research question, the present
study allows for testing three additional hypotheses that are
of interest to the field but that have arguably not yet gained
sufficient attention: First, the hypothesis that the arousal re-
sponse to wins is larger than the arousal response to losses.
Previous research has noted larger arousal r­esponses to
wins than to losses (Lole et al., 2012; Wilkes et al., 2010).
   
| 3 of 10
Hence, the outcome phases of the gamble task were par-
titioned into wins and losses, and the associated arousal
responses were compared. Again, we hypothesized that
risk taken during the preceding decision may have influ-
enced the arousal response to the gamble outcome, and de-
cision type was again included in the analysis. Second, the
hypothesis that risk‐taking individuals show a dampened
arousal response to decision making. It has been reported
that risk‐takers display a dampened arousal response during
the decision phase of risky decisions (Bechara & Damasio,
2002). The present experimental design produces indi-
vidual differences in risk taking, which allows for arousal
responses to decision making to be compared between in-
dividuals displaying different levels of risk taking. Third,
the hypothesis that laboratory findings of risk behavior can
be related to risk behavior in everyday life. That all risk
measures (also called revealed preferences) not necessar-
ily relate to self‐reported risk taking in everyday life has
been highlighted by recent research (Frey, Pedroni, Mata,
Rieskamp, & Hertwig, 2017). Finding ­behavioral and self‐
reported measures of risk taking that reflect a common
underlying risk factor has thus been argued to be an im-
portant current task for the field (Mata, Frey, & Richter,
2018). In order to examine this, participants were measured
on a self‐reported measure of risk preferences in everyday
life: the Risk Propensity Scale (RPS: Nicholson, Soane,
Fenton‐O’Creevy, & Willman, 2005).
2 | M ETHOD
2.1 | Participants
Fifty‐six participants (21 male, 35 female), aged between
18 and 31 years (M = 23.42; SD = 2.77) were recruited
through billboard advertising on Uppsala University cam-
pus. The sample was almost free from problematic gam-
bling behavior (M = 0.21, SEM = 0.14). Only four
participants recorded any problematic behavior, of which
only one could be classified as a PG (Problem Gambling
Severity Index [PGSI] = 7).1 Subjects received a movie
ticket for participation but had a chance to win additional
movie tickets (see Procedure). The study was approved by
the local ethics board.
2.2 | Task
The gambling task consisted of a card game presented on a
computer. During a single gambling trial, a card was drawn
from a virtual deck, and the player had to decide whether
1
Because the study aimed to cover as much risk‐taking behavior as possible,
no participants were excluded from the statistical analyses. The distributions
of the dependent variables fulfilled parametric statistical assumptions.
4 of 10
|    AGREN et al.

the next card drawn would be of a higher or lower rank than
the presented card. A successful guess rewarded the player
with points proportional to the probability of the successful
guess. If the player bet that the next card would be lower,
the player would receive the same amount of points as the
number of ranks higher than the rank of the current card.
For example, if the first card was a 10 and the player cor-
rectly guessed that the next card would have a lower rank,
the player would be rewarded with 4 points, since there are
four cards higher than 10 (jack, queen, king, ace). If the
player instead correctly guessed that the next card would
have a higher rank, the player would receive 8 points, since
there are eight ranks lower than 10. In this way, players
of the game could decide to make risky decisions (i.e., by
betting on the outcomes with low probability) with the po-
tential of larger wins, or to play it safe (i.e., by betting on
the outcomes with high probability) for lower wins. Every
incorrect decision resulted in a loss of 4 points, making this
a “losses‐from‐an‐initial‐endowment” procedure, which
has been reported to produce similar results as real losses
(Etchart‐Vincent & l’Haridon, 2011).
Every player started with a pot of 20 points so that no
one would go bankrupt. Participants were told that the
­virtual deck of cards consisted of two intermixed decks of
standard playing cards, in order to make it more difficult
to count cards. The gambling task consisted of 20 trials,
that is, 20 different bets. A single trial consisted of a card
being presented for 6 s, during which the participants were
instructed to make up their mind of how to bet. This was
the decision phase. When the card had been presented for
6 s, the participants were urged to press one of two but-
tons, representing bets that the next card would have a
higher or lower rank. After having pressed a button, the
text “wait for results” was shown for 6 s (the anticipation
phase), after which the outcome was presented for another
6 s (outcome phase). The participants were told that the
game was random. However, the game was rigged so that
each participant got 10 wins and 10 losses. This means that
the only difference in aggregated outcomes was dependent
on how risky the bets were made (Figure 1). In the previ-
ous example of being presented a 10, the riskier bet would
give 8 points (if this was a predestined win trial), and the

F I G U R E 1 An example of a gamble trial involving a risky or safe decision rigged to produce a win. (a) First, a card was shown for 6 s. The
participant was instructed to decide how to bet during this time. (b) A prompt allows the participant to bet on whether the next card will be higher
or lower. Because the card is four of clubs, betting that the next card will be lower constitutes a risky decision. The probability for a lower card is
low, but such a win produces a larger reward. Conversely, betting that the next card is higher constitutes a safe decision, but such an outcome will
produce a small reward. (c) Next followed a period of 6 s when the participant anticipated the result. (d) Then, the outcome was shown for 6 s. In
this case, the risky decision produced a reward of 11 points, while the safe decision produced a reward of only 2 points. Slides were taken from the
original experiment and were translated into English
AGREN et al.
safer bet would give 4 points. By rigging the game, wins
and losses can be readily compared, and participants can
be exposed to an equal number of opportunities for risk
taking, enabling comparisons of participants’ individual
risk preferences.
In order to be able to compare different kinds of deci-
sions, decisions were categorized into three categories. The
first two categories, risky decisions and safe decisions, were
defined as decisions made to cards lower than rank 6 (3–5)
or higher than rank 10 (jack–king). These cards enable a
choice between making a risky or safe decision, assuming a
fair game with a standard deck of playing cards. Using these
cards, a risky decision has a 23% chance or less of winning
and a safe decision has a 77% chance or more of winning.
Thus, it should be noted that this use of the terms “risky”
and “safe” differs from how, for example, behavioral econ-
omists use them: in those instances, risky and safe refer to
the outcome variance if prospects are ­experienced (e.g., the
volatility of the stock market, where the worth of a stock goes
up and down; the more movement, the more risk), and also
other studies where a prospect may be considered safe only
if it refers to a probability of 1. The third category, called
uncertain, contained all cards ranked 6–10 and represents
decisions where the opportunity to decide to play it safe or
risky was not as pronounced. In the uncertain category, the
least safe bet that could be made had a 31% chance of win-
ning and the safest bet possible had a 62% chance of winning.
Every participant encountered 10 cards where risky and safe
decisions could be made, and 10 cards where decisions were
more uncertain. For both types of cards, 5 wins and 5 losses
were encountered. In an attempt to boost risk taking, wins
were unevenly distributed over the gambling task so that the
first half produced 80% of the wins.
2.3 | Materials
The game was programmed in Eprime (Psychology Software
Tools, Pittsburgh, PA), and SCRs were recorded using Biopac
MP150 with Biopac EL509 electrodes. An isotonic recording
electrode gel was applied to the electrodes before they were
placed on the hypothenar eminence of the participants’ left
hand. The game was presented on a computer screen, and two
keys on an ordinary keyboard were used to play the game.
Participants filled in the RPS (Nicholson et al., 2005) and
the PGSI (Ferris, Wynne, Ladouceur, Stinchfield, & Turner,
2001). Moreover, as part of a separate project, participants
performed a task where different prospective lotteries were
evaluated.
2.4 | Procedure
At arrival, participants read and signed informed consent.
They were then showed a mock high score list, in order to
   
| 5 of 10
give them an idea of what might be a good result in the game.
This was done to incentivize participants to increase their
risk taking in order to achieve higher scores. They were told
that the high score list was from a pilot study and that they
would not compete against those participants. We told them,
truthfully, that we were going to construct a high score list
of all the participants, and that the top three results would be
rewarded with extra movie tickets: five extra for first place,
three for second place, and one extra for third place. This was
done in order to make sure that participants reacted to real
payoffs, as compared to hypothetical payoffs, which can be
an important distinction when generalizing the results to real‐
life risk (Etchart‐Vincent & l’Haridon, 2011; Locey, Jones, &
Rachlin, 2011). After this, they were led into the soundproof
chamber where the experiment took place. An explanation
of the gambling task was shown on the screen, followed
by two illustrated examples. Participants were urged to ask
questions if something was unclear regarding the rules of the
game. Skin conductance electrodes were then attached, and
the gambling session commenced. After the game, the par-
ticipants answered the RPS and the PGSI and, as part of a
separate project, performed a task where different prospec-
tive lotteries were evaluated.
2.5 | Quantification of electrodermal data
The SCR signal passed through a high‐pass hardware filter of
0.05 Hz and was analyzed with the LEDALAB software pack-
age using continuous decomposition analysis (Benedek &
Kaernbach, 2010) implemented in MATLAB (Mathworks
Inc., Natick, MA). LEDALAB is but one in a rise of new
analysis methods built on psychophysiological modeling (see
Bach et al., 2018, for an overview). SCR was scored using
the maximum phasic driver amplitude (max. SCR) 1–7 s after
each stimulus onset and then transformed (square root) and
standardized (divided by the mean) in order to normalize data
and achieve comparability between participants. Dividing by
the mean, instead of the maximum response, has the advan-
tage that the mean is a more stable and reliable measure than
the maximum response (Ben‐Shakhar, 1985). The 1–7 s in-
terval was chosen because of the time delay in C‐fiber trans-
mission of the sudomotor burst (Boucsein, 2014).
2.6 | Data analysis
To examine our main research question, that is, which gamble
phase produced the largest arousal response, a linear mixed
effects model was used, with participants as a random ­effect,
and gamble phase (decision, anticipation, outcome) and de-
cision type (uncertain, risky, safe) as fixed effects. This
analysis was used because 21 participants did not make any
risky decisions, and a repeated measures analysis of variance
(ANOVA) would have excluded these participants from the
6 of 10
|    AGREN et al.
analysis, while a linear mixed effects model can deal with
unbalanced designs (Wu, 2009). To test whether the arousal
response to wins and losses differed, a linear mixed effects
model was used, with participants as a random factor, and out-
come (wins, losses) and decision type (uncertain, risky, safe)
as fixed effects. To test if risk‐taking individuals ­display a dif-
ferent arousal response to decision making, a mixed ANOVA
was used, with risk taking as a between‐groups variable (no
risk, intermediate risk, high risk) and ­decision type (uncer-
tain, safe) as within‐group variable. Risky decisions were
excluded from the ANOVA because the no risk group made
no risky decisions, and hence there was no estimate on the
arousal response from the no risk participants during risky de-
cisions. The arousal response to risky decisions was compared
between the intermediate risk and high risk groups using an
independent t test. Finally, to test whether the amount of risky
decisions during the task correlated with everyday risk, a non-
parametric Kendall’s rank‐order correlation was used.
All frequentist statistics were calculated using SPSS. All
Bayes factors (BFs: the relative likelihood of the observed
data given different models) comparing the models were
calculated using the default settings in JASP (2018). For
details on the default ANOVA settings, see Rouder, Morey,
Verhagen, Swagman, and Wagenmakers (2017). For the
Bayesian ANOVAs, we first present the model that has the
strongest evidence in relation to the null hypothesis. The
­remaining models are tested against this model. To illus-
trate, consider three models: a model containing only Main
Effect A, which yields a BF of 100 when compared to the
null model; a model containing Main Effect B, which yields
a BF of 10 when compared to the null model; and a model
containing an interaction between Main Effect A and Main
Effect B, which yields a BF of 5 when compared to the null
model. A myopic comparison only with the null hypothesis
could result in the belief that there is positive evidence for
both main effects as well as an interaction. However, when
comparing the models against each other, it is clear that the
model containing Main Effect A is the most plausible model
for explaining the data: it is 10 times more likely to explain
the data than the model containing Main Effect B, and 20
times more likely than the model containing interaction. For
details on the default t‐test settings, see Rouder, Engelhart,
McCabe, and Morey (2016), and for details on the default
settings for correlation testing, see van Doorn, Ly, Marsman,
and Wagenmakers (2018).
3 | R ES U LTS
3.1 | Skin conductance responses to the
different gambling phases
A linear mixed effects model, with participants as a random
effect, and gamble phase (decision, anticipation, outcome)
and decision type (uncertain, risky, safe) as fixed effects, and
SCR as the dependent variable, showed that SCRs differed be-
tween phases, F(2, 432) = 21.23, p < 0.001, BF = 712,606,
but no effect of decision type could be found, F(2,
432) = 0.42, p = 0.66, BF = 0.04, nor an interaction between
gamble phase and decision type, F(4, 432) = 1.97, p = 0.10,
BF = 0.01 (Figure 2). Follow‐up t tests using Bonferroni cor-
rection showed that the anticipation phase produced higher
SCRs compared to both the decision phase, t(55) = 4.59,
p < 0.001, BF > 1,000 and the outcome phase, t(55) = 3.48,
p = 0.003, BF = 64.3. SCRs did not differ between the deci-
sion phase and the outcome phase, t(55) = −1.70, p = 0.29,
BF = 1.72. See online supporting information, Figure S1, for
a graphical display of descriptive statistics.
3.2 | Skin conductance responses to
wins and losses
A linear mixed effects model, with participants as a random
effect, and outcome (wins, losses) and decision type (uncer-
tain, risky, safe) as fixed effects, showed no effect of out-
come, F(1, 271) = 1.30, p = 0.26, BF = 0.25, no effect of
decision type, F(2, 271) = 0.40, p = 0.67, BF = 0.06, and
no interaction effect between outcome and decision type,
F(2, 271) = 2.46, p = 0.09, BF = 0.01 (Figure 3).
3.3 | Differences in arousal response to
decision making between different levels of
risk taking
In order to see if risk‐takers differed in arousal response
to decision making, the participants were partitioned into
three groups based on the risk‐taking behavior displayed
in the gamble task. The first group consisted of subjects
who never made a risky decision (no risk; n = 21), the
second group of subjects who took 1–2 risky decisions
1.5
*
Mean corrected SCR
*
1.0
0.5
0.0
n
e
n
m
io
io
co
at
is
ec
ip
ut
ic
D
O
nt
A
F I G U R E 2 Mean corrected SCRs for the different phases of a
gamble trial. *p < 0.05 on Bonferroni‐corrected follow‐up t tests. Error
bars represent SEM
AGREN et al.
1.5
Wins
Mean corrected SCR Losses
1.0
0.5
0.0
Uncertain Risky Safe
Decision type
FIGURE 3 Descriptive statistics showing mean corrected SCRs
for wins and losses following the different decision types. Error bars
represent SEM
(intermediate risk; n = 20), and the third group of subjects
who made 3 or more risky decisions (high risk; n = 15). In
this way, there is roughly an equal number of subjects in
each group, while keeping the subjects who never took a
risky decision in a single group. Because we followed data
in creating these groups, the analyses involving them are to
be considered exploratory.
Because the no risk group did not take any risky deci-
sions, it was not possible to compare all the groups on the
SCRs to the category of risky decisions. The intermediate
risk and high risk groups did not differ in their SCRs to risky
decisions, t(33) = −0.77, p = 0.45, BF = 0.87, but remember
that participants in the intermediate risk group only made
1 or 2 risky decisions, so the comparison is based on few
trials. A better comparison can be made using decisions in
the uncertain and safe categories. The decisions in the uncer-
tain category contain more risk than the decisions in the safe
category and represent a sort of forced risk taking. Hence,
according to previous data (Crone et al., 2004), risk‐takers
should show dampened SCRs to uncertain decisions, as com-
pared to nonrisk‐takers, but not to safe decisions. A repeated
measures ANOVA with SCRs to decisions as the dependent
variable, risk taking (no risk, intermediate risk, high risk) as a
between‐groups variable, and decision type (safe, uncertain)
as a within‐group variable showed a main effect of risk tak-
ing, F(1, 53) = 5.26, p = 0.008. Bonferroni corrected t tests
revealed that both the no risk group, t(34) = 3.41, p = 0.006,
BF > 1,000, and the intermediate risk group, t(33) = 2.78,
p = 0.03, BF > 1,000, showed larger SCRs than the high
risk group. However, the no risk group and the intermediate
risk group did not differ, t(39) = 0.11, p = 0.91, BF = 0.10
(Figure 4). No main effect of decision type, F(1, 53) = 0.38,
p = 0.54, BF = 0.14, or Risk Taking × Decision Type, F(2,
53) = 0.97, p = 0.39, BF = 1.10, could be noted. See sup-
porting information, Figure S2, for a graphical display of de-
scriptive statistics.
   
| 7 of 10
Mean corrected SCR
1.5
*
1.0 *
0.5
0.0
k
k
k
ris
ris
ris
h
o
te
ig
N
ia
H
ed
rm
te
In
F I G U R E 4 Mean corrected SCRs to the decision phase for
the groups displaying different amounts of risk behavior (no risk,
intermediate risk, high risk). Error bars represent SEM. The figure
displays the main effect of risk behavior (safe and uncertain decisions
collapsed), and Bonferroni‐corrected follow‐up t tests. *p < 0.05
3.4 | The connection between risk behavior
displayed in the experimental task and self‐
reported risk taking in everyday life
The hypothesis that risk‐takers during the gambling proce-
dure would exhibit more risk taking in real life was tested by
calculating nonparametric correlations (Kendall’s rank‐order
correlations) between the number of risky decisions and the
RPS score. Because there is only one logic hypothesis tested
here (that risk‐takers during the gamble procedure would ex-
hibit less risk taking in real life seems implausible), a one‐
sided hypothesis test was calculated. The results showed
strong evidence of a positive correlation, τb(54) = 0.26,
p = 0.01, BF = 16.0.
4 | DISCUSSION
This study examined the different phases of a gambling trial
(decision, anticipation, outcome) and analyzed the arousal
response for each phase during a simple gambling task. In
this way, this study separated processes that have previously
been collapsed together in tonic measures of arousal and, to
our knowledge, have never been examined separately all in
the same study. The aim of the study was to characterize the
arousal response during gambling, which is believed to be
crucial for gambling behavior, in order to suggest mecha-
nisms of action for further study. The results show that the
largest SCRs occurred in the anticipation phase of a gam-
ble trial, irrespective of the risk involved in the preceding
decision. Hence, if physiological arousal is regarded as a
key factor in gambling behavior, then the present result of-
fers the anticipation phase of gambling as a major source
for this and stresses the importance of studying this phase
separately.
8 of 10
|    AGREN et al.
When examining the outcome phase, no differences in
SCRs were noted between wins and losses. This is in con-
trast to previous results noting larger responses to wins than
to losses (Lole et al., 2012; Wilkes et al., 2010). However,
the present results may not be comparable to these results
because they used an EGM gambling task, which may differ
from the present experimental task in many ways, for ex-
ample, in perceived risk and control. Moreover, when gam-
bling on an EGM, there is no opportunity for safe decisions.
Still, excluding the wins and losses following safe decisions
from our linear mixed effects model did not quite produce
a significant difference between wins and losses, F(1,
161) = 3.0, p = 0.09. Hence, either the arousal response to
wins and losses in our card game does not differ, or perhaps
it is a power problem, and we would be able to observe a
difference in a larger study, with more trials and more risky
decisions.
The participants in the high risk group showed decreased
SCRs to decision making compared to both the no risk and
the intermediate risk groups, which somewhat mirrors previ-
ous results. It has previously been noted that high risk‐tak-
ers (Bechara & Damasio, 2002) display decreased SCRs to
risky decisions during the IGT. However, the present results
showed decreased SCRs to decision making over both un-
certain decisions, which represents a sort of forced risk tak-
ing, and safe decisions, indicating that the decreased arousal
to decision making in risk‐taking individuals extends be-
yond risky ­decisions. Within the framework of the somatic
marker theory, Bechara and Damasio (2002) thought that
high risk‐takers made a conscious effort to override their
somatic markers. However, it is unlikely that the present re-
sults are the product of somatic markers, because the pres-
ent gambling task ­depended on stated probabilities and did
not contain a process of learning during which the hypothe-
sized somatic markers could be formed. Thus, for the pres-
ent r­ esults, a more parsimonious explanation is that SCRs to
decision making are tied to an individual’s disposition for
risk taking and, hence, might constitute a biomarker for risky
decision making. This also offers an alternative explanation
for previous results (Bechara & Damasio, 2002; Crone et al.,
2004).
Interestingly, increased risk taking in gambling behavior
was reflected in self‐reported risk taking in everyday life,
which indicates a consistent behavior profile regarding risk
taking. Recent research has suggested a moderate but stable
psychometric function of risk preferences for propensity (i.e.,
self‐reported) and frequency measures (Frey et al., 2017), but
with little contribution from behavioral measures. However,
other recent research has pointed to the notion that the lack
of relation between behavioral measures and propensity mea-
sures may be due to psychometric issues with most behavioral
measures and entanglement of cognitive abilities (Pedroni
et al., 2017). Finding behavioral measures that bypass these
shortcomings, and which more strongly connect to the un-
derlying risk function, is naturally of great relevance for the
field. The present results suggest that the task used here is a
viable candidate.
A limitation of the study is that SCRs may have habitu-
ated during the gambling procedure, and that this may have
affected the comparison of SCRs between wins and losses,
because of the uneven distribution of wins and losses
over the experiment. Additional analyses were performed
to address this limitation, and the results did not indicate
that habituation influenced the results (see supporting
information).
A limitation of the gamble task was that risky decisions
were relatively rare, which made the results on risky deci-
sions based on fewer participants and fewer trials compared
to safe and uncertain decisions. More risky decisions may
be achieved by simply running more trials. The 20 trials run
in the present study were completed in about 7 min, and we
predict that participants could play many more trials without
losing interest, although this remains to be tested. A way of
increasing risk taking in the gamble task would be to omit
the punishment of −4 points for losses, as these may have
motivated participants to make safer bets.
The implications of the present results suggest several
future avenues of research. First, when studying arousal in
gambling, the present results suggest that the arousal re-
sponse to anticipation should be studied, because it might
represent a major contributor of arousal, so that a profile of
arousal responses during gambling is incomplete without it.
Second, it would be interesting to see if problem gamblers
differ from healthy controls in any specific gamble phase, in
order to further characterize the physiological arousal in PGs
during gambling and the possible impact of arousal on PG
behavior. Specifically, it might be possible to identify PGs,
or at least risk‐takers, by looking at the SCRs to decision
making.
In conclusion, this detailed analysis of SCRs during a
simple gamble task advances our knowledge of the somatic
activity during gambling and decision making. The study
demonstrates that the arousal response to gambling is a p­ roduct
of several separate responses to different phases of a gamble
trial. Anticipation produced the largest arousal response, com-
pared with the responses produced during ­decision making
and when being presented with the gamble outcome. Hence,
in order to understand the influence of arousal on gambling
behavior, it is informative to study these phases individually
and to include the anticipation phase, which has been largely
overlooked in previous research. Taking these considerations
into account could illuminate ­future studies on the arousal
responses during gambling ­behavior. In addition, risk taking
was coupled with decreased SCRs to decision making, which
might constitute a biomarker for risk‐taking individuals that
can be further examined in future gambling research.
AGREN et al.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council
and the Sasakawa Young Leader Fellowship fund. The
­authors declare no conflict of interest.
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SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in
the Supporting Information section at the end of the article.
Table S1
Figure S1
Figure S2
Figure S3
How to cite this article: Agren T, Millroth P,
Andersson P, Ridzén M, Björkstrand J. Detailed
analysis of skin conductance responses during a
gambling task: Decision, anticipation, and outcomes.
Psychophysiology. 2019;e13338. https://doi.
org/10.1111/psyp.13338