On this basis, Campbell-Meiklejohn and colleagues (2008) hypothesized that decisions to chase losses depend upon activity in neural pathways involved in reward expectancy; while decisions to quit chasing losses depend upon activity in other neural circuits involved in visceral arousal and the anticipation of aversive consequences. Twenty-three participants showed a steady willingness to gamble in an effort to recover losses. On average, they chose to chase the loss on 0.73 ± 0.02 (SE) of all decisions and the mean number of chase decisions per round was 2.07 trials (±0.07; min 1.5, max 2.88). The proportion of decisions to chase on the loss-chasing game was strongly associated with the total score on an independent 14-item assessment of participants’ propensity to chase in other gambling activities (Corless and Dickerson, 1989a) (r = 0.67, p < 0.001).
