The Personality Context of Adolescent Gambling: Better Explained by the Big Five or Sensation-Seeking?

Abstract

Adolescent gambling is a serious and increasingly common problem. Studies in adults have found several within-and between-person associations between personality and gambling. We aim to extend these findings to a sample of adolescents selected for gambling behavior. Participants consisted of a racially diverse sample of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 (n = 227). We collected self-reported information on normal-range personality traits, sensation-seeking, and gambling frequency, severity, and motives in an online survey. Normal-range personality traits were not correlated with gambling, but trait sensation-seeking was positively correlated with gambling. Latent class analyses showed that classes of adolescent gamblers may be differentiated based on personality trait patterns, although these classes were not differentiated on gambling severity or frequency. Finally, in hierarchical analyses, six homogenous components representing the five normal-range personality traits and sensation-seeking accounted for maximum variance in gambling outcomes. In this model, components representing sensation-seeking and conscientiousness were the only significant unique predictors of gambling-related outcomes. Our findings suggest that subgroups of adolescent gamblers may be distinguished based on personality trait patterns before the emergence of problematic gambling. In other words, personality differences may reflect an early predisposition to divergent pathways to adolescent gambling. Our findings concur with previous work and underscore the importance of sensation-seeking as a particularly important risk factor of initiation and escalation of adolescent gambling.

Sensation Seeking and Gambling Behavior in Adolescence: Can Externalizing Problems Moderate this Relationship?

“…In addition, our results highlight that gambling severity are significantly and positively correlated both with high levels of sensation seeking and with the presence of externalized problems. These data are in line with studies present in the literature that highlight that the desire for excitement, novelty, and intense stimulation, characterizing individuals who have high levels of sensation seeking, is closely connected to gambling severity [24][25][26][27][28]. In addition, the presence of Post hoc analyses showed that the relationship between sensation seeking and gambling severity was significant when externalizing problems were medium (β = 0.26, p = 0.000) and high (β = 0.35, p = 0.002).…”

“…For example, a study conducted by Donati et al [24] highlighted that sensation seeking was a significant predictor of at-risk and problematic gambling. Similarly, Estevez et al [25] found that sensation seeking was high in young gamblers, as did Reardon et al [26], who highlighted a positive correlation between these two variables. Another recent study found that one of the antecedents of regular gambling was high sensation seeking scores [27].…”

Associations of the Big Five and locus of control with problem gambling in a large Australian sample

“…When including further (maybe more specific) predictors of problem gambling, one may investigate whether there is unique (or overlapping) variance of the global personality traits as compared to more specific gamblingrelated variables. (2) Researchers may analyze subgroups of gamblers [54,55] or different forms of gambling such as gambling on cards, sports, or bingo [14]. This may help generate further treatments and prevention initiatives for vulnerable subgroups.…”

Testing the Associations Between Adult Playfulness and Sensation Seeking: A SEM Analysis of Librarians and Police Officers

“…SS relates to numerous behaviors and outcomes. For example, the literature provides robust evidence for the predictive value of SS for risk appraisals and perceptions (e.g., Zuckerman, 1991Zuckerman, , 2007, behaviors such as substance use (e.g., Baker and Yardley, 2002;Martín-Fernández et al, 2019), hobbies (e.g., Furnham, 2004), vocational choices (e.g., Roth, 2003), gambling and sexual behaviors (e.g., Kalichman and Rompa, 1995;Reardon et al, 2019;Moynihan et al, 2021), and narrow domains such as political violence (Schumpe et al, 2020), to name but a few [for an in-depth overview, see Roberti (2004)].…”