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Overview
Harmful gambling has historically been viewed as an impulse control disorder, where individuals lacked the self-restraint to stop gambling. However, recent research has found that impulsivity includes features of personality, cognitive, and behavioural components. This means that the relationship between impulsivity and harmful gambling might be more complex than originally thought.
Key Points
Impulsivity has been shown to be associated with gambling and harmful gambling in both cross-sectional and longitudinal research. Impulsivity can also be examined with neurocognitive tests. Pathological gamblers show clear signs of impulsive choice on these tasks -- for example preferring immediate over delayed rewards and problems inhibiting impulsive actions. Currently however, there is little consensus on the overall definition of impulsivity as well as its components. There is a trend in the field away from focusing on gambling as a function of impulsivity and towards understanding it as influenced by factors of addiction (one of which, may be impulsivity).
Search the Evidence Centre for Impulsivity
References
Abbott, Max; Binde, Per; Clark, Luke; Hodgins, David; Korn, David; Pereira, Alexius; Quilty, Lena; Thomas, Anna; Volberg, Rachel; Walker, Douglas; Williams, Robert. (2015). Conceptual Framework of Harmful Gambling: An International Collaboration Revised Edition. Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO), Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Blaszczynski, A., & Nower, L. (2002). A pathways model of problem and pathological gambling. Addiction, 97(5), 487-499.
Potenza, M. N. (2008). The neurobiology of pathological gambling and drug addiction: an overview and new findings. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3181-3189.
Leeman, R. F., & Potenza, M. N. (2012). Similarities and differences between pathological gambling and substance use disorders: a focus on impulsivity and compulsivity. Psychopharmacology, 219(2), 469-490.