Adaptive and Maladaptive Personality Traits in High-Risk Gamblers

Abstract

Gambling Disorder (GD) is an addictive disorder resulting in significant impairment in occupational and social functioning. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship of GD risk to adaptive and maladaptive personality dimensions in a sample of nonreferred Italian gamblers. The authors found the risk for GD to show significant associations with the Openness and Conscientiousness scales of the Big Five Inventory (BFI); however, these effects were not significant after controlling for alcohol and drug use. GD risk showed significant associations with the Detachment and Antagonism domains of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5), as well as with the PID-5 facet scales of Hostility, Callousness, Deceitfulness, Manipulativeness, Irresponsibility, and (low) Rigid Perfectionism, even when controlling for alcohol and drug use. Maladaptive personality dispositions may serve as risk factors for pathological gambling, even beyond their impact on frequently concomitant problems with alcohol and other drugs.

Pathological personality facets and emotion (dys)regulation in gambling disorder

“…Also, this converges with the study of Nigro et al (2018) conducted in a non-clinical population of gamblers and showing a positive association between all the five domains of the PID-5 Short-Form and GD's severity. However, our findings partially disagree with the study of Carlotta et al (2015) which reported significant differences between high-risk and low-risk gamblers only on the Detachment and Antagonism domains. This discrepancy may be explained by the differences in the measure of GD of Carlotta et al's studya two item instrument investigating lying-behaviors related to gamblingpotentially leading to an over-representation of antisocial features among high-risk gamblers.…”

“…The association found in our study between this facet and GD's severity agrees with the conclusion drawn by Carlotta et al . () supporting the asserted association between Antisociality and GD (Rogier, Velotti & Zavattini, ).…”

“…However, our findings partially disagree with the study of Carlotta et al . () which reported significant differences between high‐risk and low‐risk gamblers only on the Detachment and Antagonism domains. This discrepancy may be explained by the differences in the measure of GD of Carlotta et al .…”

“…However, the few existing studies (Carlotta, Krueger, Markon et al, 2015;Nigro, Ciccarelli & Cosenza, 2018) investigating the role of pathological personality dimensions in GD are conducted among non-clinical samples. In the first study (Carlotta et al, 2015), at-risk gamblers scored significantly higher, compared to not-at-risk gamblers on two domains of PID-5, Detachment and Antagonism, as well as on several PID-5 facet scales, as Hostility, Callousness, Deceitfulness, Manipulativeness, Irresponsibility and Rigid Perfectionism. In the most recent study (Nigro et al, 2018), authors found positive and significant associations between the five PID-5 domains and GD's severity.…”

Incremental validity of positive orientation: predictive efficiency beyond the five-factor model

“…Openness may be a burden as well -e.g. in the case when you have to do an ordinary, boring job; it also seems to be a risk factor of gambling disorder (Carlotta et al, 2015). Extraversion -a trait that includes positive emotionality (McCrae & Costa, 1987) -should also be treated with caution, as it is not introversion which predicts negative emotionality, but neuroticism (i.e.…”