How Gambling Affects The Brain And Who Is Most Vulnerable To Addiction

This serves as a baseline to compare problem behavior with healthy behavior while giving perspective to the reason casino gambling exists at all. So the casino website works, but can you find your favorite games or get in contact with customer support? If the casino website is badly designed then you will simply not enjoy playing there. These issues may range from the simple layout of the pages to how accessible the site’s features are, the response time from customer service and game time-outs. In people with gambling disorders as well as substance use disorders, a meta-analysis found that several studies showed less activity in the ventral striatum while anticipating monetary rewards (Luijten, M., et al., JAMA Psychiatry, Vol. 74, No. 4, 2017). Along with other findings, those results suggest that this part of the brain contributes to impulsive behaviors for people with gambling problems.

The impact of peer socialisation processes and hegemonic masculine norms around sports betting have been described in previous studies (Ayandele et al., 2019; Bunn et al., 2019; Deans et al., 2017a). Sports betting has also been related to the development of socially valorised identities for Gamblers Choice bonus young men (Lamont and Hing, 2021). Our research supports and builds on these previous findings by demonstrating in a large sample that it has become a more prevalent part of sports fandom for younger adult men. Our results demonstrate there are significant differences between the attitudes of sports bettors (either sports betting or sports betting combined with non-sports betting), non-sport bettors and non-bettors.

In doing so, we investigate the relationship between individual demographic characteristics, the gambling behaviour of these sports fans and differences in attitudes to sports betting. Whilst other studies have reported various demographic risk factors for sports betting and gambling, our results contribute by clearly demonstrating the significant interaction between age and gender. The importance of our study for public health policy and harm reduction campaign strategies is twofold. First, our sampling frame is likely the target audience of sports betting marketers, providing strong evidence upon which to base public health policy and harm reduction campaigns. Second, such campaigns should be aimed specifically at young men to help counteract the increasing environmental and social normalisation of sports betting.

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