Tuesday 5 July 2005
Problem Gamblers Share Personality Profiles of Substance Abusers: Otago Research
Young adults with problem gambling behaviour have personality profiles strikingly similar to the profiles of those with
alcohol, marijuana and nicotine-associated addictive disorders, according to a new research arising from the University
of Otago’s Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Research Unit.
The new findings are published today in the US-based international journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
The research compared personality assessments obtained in 1991-1992 for 939 young adults (475 men and 464 women) from
Dunedin who were 18 years old, with diagnoses of problem gambling and alcohol, cannabis and nicotine dependence in the
previous year based on structured interviews conducted when the individuals were 21 years old in 1993-1994.
In the past it has been difficult to identify personality traits associated with problem gambling, because most previous
studies have drawn subjects from those seeking treatment for a gambling disorder, says Research Unit Director Associate
Professor Richie Poulton.
“These subjects are unlikely to be representative of the majority of individuals in the community with gambling
problems,” Associate Professor Poulton explained.
He and his colleagues found that young adults with a problem gambling diagnosis in the year before they turned 21 were,
on average, more likely to have high scores for negative emotionality and for impulsive and risk-taking behavior on
personality tests taken at age 18 years.
“In particular, young adults with a diagnosis of problem gambling were characterised by negative emotions such as
nervousness or worry, anger or aggressiveness, feeling mistreated or victimised, and unconstrained behaviours of
risk-taking, impulsivity, and rebelliousness,” he and his co-authors write in the journal article.
“Past-year problem gambling was significantly associated with past-year alcohol dependence, cannabis dependence, and
nicotine dependence,” they report.
“The associations between problem gambling and the three substance use disorders were similar in magnitude and were
nearly as large as the well-established association between alcohol and nicotine dependence.”
“A focus on more basic traits, such as individual differences in personality, is a promising approach for understanding
the high rate of comorbidity [conditions which occur together] of pathological and problem gambling with other addictive
disorders,” they concluded.
Note: The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit is supported by the New Zealand Health Research
Council. This study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., the William T. Grant
Foundation, New York and the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, London, England.
ENDS