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Exploring the Predictive Value of Gambling Motives, Cognitive Distortions, and Materialism on Problem Gambling Severity in Adolescents and Young Adults

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Abstract

Gambling motives and cognitive distortions are thought to be associated because both coping and financial motives to gamble appear to be predictors of gambling related cognitive distortions. Therefore, there is an argument to be made that gambling motives, cognitive distortions, and materialism share common attributes and might be related to problem gambling severity. The present paper aims to examine the relationship between these three variables, both in a clinical and community setting, to see if they can predict gambling severity. A sample of 250 participants from the general population and 31 participants from the clinical population was recruited. The results showed that the clinical sample scored higher on gambling severity, cognitive distortions, materialism, and gambling motives. It also showed that low scores in enhancement motives and higher scores in social motives and gambling related cognitions predicted gambling severity in older gamblers, whereas for younger patients, gambling severity was best predicted by higher scores in materialism and coping motives, and lower scores for enhancement and social motives. In the community sample, gambling severity correlated with gambling related cognitive distortions and with gambling motives (except for social and coping motives within the women subsample). These results testify to the importance of materialism, cognitive distortions, and gambling motives as risk factors for problem gambling both in community and clinical samples.

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Funding

Financial support was received through the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (grant RTI2018-101837-B-100). FIS PI14/00290, FIS PI17/01167 received aid from the Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad. The research was also funded by the Delegación del Gobierno para el Plan Nacional sobre Drogas (2017I067 and 2019I47), CIBER Fisiología Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBERobn) and CIBER Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), both of which are initiatives of ISCIII. We thank CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya for institutional support. Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) “Una manera de hacer Europa”/“a way to build Europe”. HLG is funded by the Beatriu de Pinós programme of the Secretariat for Universities and Research (Grant Number 2017 BP00035). GMB is supported by a postdoctoral grant of the Fundación Ciudadanía y Valores. TMM, MLM and CVA are supported by a predoctoral grant awarded by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (FPU16/02087; FPU15/0291; FPU16/01453).

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Correspondence to Susana Jiménez-Murcia.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

Participation in this study had no compensation whatsoever for the people who participated. All schools received a general feedback report. This study was carried out in accordance with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. The Ethics Committee of the first author’s university approved the study (ref number ETK-13/15-16).

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Due to the nature of this research and the clinical composition of one of the samples, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, therefore, supporting data is not available.

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Estévez, A., Jauregui, P., Lopez-Gonzalez, H. et al. Exploring the Predictive Value of Gambling Motives, Cognitive Distortions, and Materialism on Problem Gambling Severity in Adolescents and Young Adults. J Gambl Stud 37, 643–661 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-020-09972-z

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