Past research frequently reports significant relation between workaholism and job burnout, and some studies further indicate workaholism varies across countries. Surprisingly, there is no study that directly examines whether country moderates the workaholism-burnout association. To address this research question, we have collected independent work samples from two culturally diverse countries, namely the People’s Republic of China and the United States. A total of 2243 participants (1243 American respondents and 1000 Chinese respondents) were recruited. Preliminary group comparison suggested that there were statistical differences among participants from different industries on the key variables, including workaholism, job demands, autonomy and emotional exhaustion. Therefore, we have divided our participants into three subsamples [i.e., (1) natural resources, mining and construction industry, (2) manufacturing industry, and (3) service industry] and separate analyses were conducted. In the moderated regression analyses, workaholism significantly predicted two dimensions of job burnout, namely emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, even when job demand and job autonomy were controlled. Finally, although two significant moderating effects were found, there was a lack of consistent empirical support to the hypothesized moderating effect of country on workaholism-burnout association. Implications and limitations were discussed.

No abstract

Cognitive perspectives on gambling propose that biased thinking plays a significant role in sustaining gambling participation and, in vulnerable individuals, gambling problems. One prominent set of cognitive biases include illusions of control involving beliefs that it is possible to influence random gaming events. Sociologists have reported that (some) gamblers believe that it is possible to throw dice in different ways to achieve gaming outcomes (e.g., 'dice-setting' in craps). However, experimental demonstrations of these phenomena are lacking. Here, we asked regular gamblers to roll a computer-simulated, but fair, 6 sided die for monetary prizes. Gamblers allowed the die to roll for longer when attempting to win higher value bets, and when attempting to hit high winning numbers. This behaviour was exaggerated in gamblers motivated to keep gambling following the experience of almost-winning in gambling games. These results suggest that gambling cognitive biases find expression in the motor behaviour of rolling dice for monetary prizes, possibly reflecting embodied substrates.

Heightened impulsivity and cognitive biases are risk factors for gambling problems. However, little is known about precisely how these factors increase the risks of gambling-related harm in vulnerable individuals. Here, we modelled the behaviour of eighty-seven community-recruited regular, but not clinically problematic, gamblers during a binary-choice reinforcement-learning game, to characterise the relationships between impulsivity, cognitive biases, and the capacity to make optimal action selections and learn about action-values. Impulsive gamblers showed diminished use of an optimal (Bayesian-derived) probability estimate when selecting between candidate actions, and showed slower learning rates and enhanced non-linear probability weighting while learning action values. Critically, gamblers who believed that it is possible to predict winning outcomes (as 'predictive control') failed to use the game's reinforcement history to guide their action selections. Extensive evidence attests to the ease with which gamblers can erroneously perceive structure in the reinforcement history of games when there is none. Our findings demonstrate that the generic and specific risk factors of impulsivity and cognitive biases can interfere with the capacity of some gamblers to utilise structure when it is available in the reinforcement history of games, potentially increasing their risks of sustaining gambling-related harms.