Gambling with Rose-Tinted Glasses on: Use of Emotion-Regulation Strategies Correlates with Dysfunctional Cognitions in Gambling Disorder Patients

Abstract

Background and aimsExisting research shows that gambling disorder patients (GDPs) process gambling outcomes abnormally when compared against healthy controls (HCs). These anomalies present the form of exaggerated or distorted beliefs regarding the expected utility of outcomes and one’s ability to predict or control gains and losses, as well as retrospective reinterpretations of what caused them. This study explores the possibility that the emotional regulation strategies GDPs use to cope with aversive events are linked to these cognitions.Methods41 GDPs and 45 HCs, matched in sociodemographic variables, were assessed in gambling severity, emotion-regulation strategies (cognitive emotion-regulation questionnaire, CERQ), and gambling-related cognitions (gambling-related cognitions scale, GRCS).ResultsGDPs showed higher scores in all gambling-related cognition dimensions. Regarding emotion regulation, GDPs were observed to use self-blame and catastrophizing, but also positive refocusing, more often than controls. Additionally, in GDPs, putatively adaptive CERQ strategies shared a significant portion of variance with South Oaks gambling screen severity and GRCS beliefs. Shared variability was mostly attributable to the roles of refocusing on planning and putting into perspective at positively predicting severity and the interpretative bias (GDPs propensity to reframe losses in a more benign way), respectively.Discussion and conclusionsResults show links between emotion-regulation strategies and problematic gambling-related behaviors and cognitions. The pattern of those links supports the idea that GDPs use emotion-regulation strategies, customarily regarded as adaptive, to cope with negative emotions, so that the motivational and cognitive processing of gambling outcomes becomes less effective in shaping gambling-related behavior.

Types of Emotion Regulation and Their Associations with Gambling: A Cross-Sectional Study with Disordered and Non-problem Ecuadorian Gamblers

“…suppression), that have been related to poor psychological health (Gross & John, 2003;Potthoff et al, 2016). In line with this prediction, a recent study, by Navas et al (2016) showed that a cluster of gambling disorder patients with stronger cognitive distortions were more prone to use the strategy putting in perspective (from the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, CERQ, Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006) in daily life. Additionally, not only higher scores in GRCS, but also putting in perspective, and refocusing on planning (both of which are customarily considered adaptive strategies) were positively related to gambling severity.…”

“…Somewhat counterintuitively, these strategies seem to help gamblers deceive themselves, get an imaginary sense of mastery and justify their desire for gambling. Tentatively, enhancement of positive emotional states elicited by gambling episodes could bias the processing of gambling outcomes, altering associative and causal attribution learning, and thereby increasing the strength of gambling distorted beliefs (Navas, 2016).…”

Trait and neurobiological underpinnings of negative emotion regulation in gambling disorder

“…In the first assessment session of our protocol (composed by several measures, some of which were not relevant to the aims of this study and are reported elsewhere (i.e. ), a psychologist with 3‐year experience in assessment confirmed the absence of mental health comorbidities in GDPs and any mental health disorders in HCs. Self‐report measures of GD severity and substance use were taken in order to corroborate GD diagnosis and to ensure the control of comorbid substance abuse.…”

Impulsividad y conciencia del problema predicen la adherencia terapéutica y el abandono del tratamiento en el trastorno por juego de azar

“…Segundo, la búsqueda de sensaciones podría interferir con los esfuerzos terapéuticos para lograr que los pacientes reconozcan las consecuencias negativas del juego. De hecho, algunos autores han propuesto que los factores motivacionales sesgan las cogniciones sobre el juego, como predicen los modelos de razonamiento motivado (Navas et al, 2016). Por tanto, la conciencia de problemas podría ser sensible a estrategias de entrenamiento en habilidades metacognitivas (Mansueto et al, 2016).…”