Loss-chasing poses a challenge to our understanding of the other impulsive disorders discussed previously. At first glance, loss-chasing seems to be a behavior that is highly specific to gambling and pathological gamblers. It is behavior that is not obviously impulsive; it is aversively motivated by the strong desire to avoid a known bad outcome. In this sense, loss-chasing can be seen as an “escape” behavior. Decisions to chase set the relative value of a known bad outcome against the value of a larger but uncertain bad outcome. However, where significant financial liabilities have already accumulated, loss-chasing can also reflect decisions “against one’s best interests and inability to learn from previous mistakes, with repeated decisions leading to negative consequences” (Bechara and Damasio, 2005). Substance use, and alcoholism (but less obviously, bipolar disorder), seem also to show the persistence of behaviors that impose higher and higher costs, at each point testing whether the affected individual is able to stop. Therefore, it is possible that individuals with alcohol and substance-use problems will also show deficits on the laboratory model of loss-chasing behavior, suggesting that their shared mechanisms go beyond impulse control and reflect the evaluation of present against future bad outcomes.
