The dishonest gambler: Low HEXACO honesty–humility and gambling severity in a community sample of gamblers

Abstract

Personality dimensions have been found to be important in understanding the aetiology of disordered gambling. While the majority of research has focused on the Five-Factor Model of personality, recent empirical evidence also indicated that the honesty-humility factor of the HEXACO personality model may be a key personality correlate of gambling behaviour. In the present research, we extend the understanding between personality and gambling severity by further assessing whether HEXACO dimensions are associated with both current gambling status and gambling severity in a community-recruited sample of gamblers (N = 427). In addition, we examined whether motivations to engage in gambling (enhancement, coping, social and financial) mediated the relationship between personality and gambling severity on the Problem Gambling Severity Index. Demographic covariates were controlled for in our analyses. The results indicate that honesty-humility was the only personality dimension that significantly predicted gambling status (non-gamblers vs. current gamblers). In addition, lower scores on honesty-humility, conscientiousness and openness were significantly associated with gambling severity. Lastly, coping motives were the only significant mediator in the relationship between honesty-humility and increased gambling severity. The results offer further support to the notion that honesty-humility may be an especially pertinent personality dimension in understanding the aetiology of disordered gambling. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The influence of personality on individuals' expatriation willingness in the context of safe and dangerous environments

“…In this way, our findings support previous research that has argued that individuals' expatriation willingness antecedents are context-specific (e.g. Aryee et al , 1996; Kim et al , 2018). The present research warrants a further investigation of the impact of context in expatriation studies and supports the appeal to “conceptualize the environment in which expatriates live and work in a more fine-grained way” (Bader et al , 2015, p. 857).…”

“…Weller and Tikir, 2011). Other studies on topics such as risky driving behavior (Burtăverde et al , 2017) or gambling (Kim et al , 2018) have also found that the HEXACO model had better predictive power than the FFM. Since expatriation to dangerous environments can be considered a risky endeavor, we believe that the HEXACO model of personality will provide broad and highly applicable trait taxonomies concerning expatriation willingness.…”

“…community attachment or role commitment) might indeed be context-specific (e.g. Aryee et al , 1996; Kim et al , 2018). Therefore, the present study contributes to the literature by experimentally assessing individuals' expatriation willingness within the context of two types of settings: expatriate assignments involving relocating to a safe environment and expatriate assignments involving relocating to a dangerous environment.…”

Associations between financial gambling motives, gambling frequency and level of problem gambling: a meta‐analytic review

“…Across different study populations and including large sample sizes, some studies have reported positive correlations between financial motives and disordered gambling severity, which remained after statistically controlling for multiple covariates including the shared variance with other gambling motives (e.g., [19][20][21]. However, other studies reported that a positive bivariate association was attenuated when the shared variance with other motives was partialed out (e.g., [22][23][24], and some other studies have failed to detect basic differences in financial motives between groups with and without gambling problems (25,26). In one study (27), the proportion of people who endorsed a single item 'to win money' was lower among those with gambling problems compared to those who gamble without problems.…”

Associations between financial gambling motives, gambling frequency, and level of problem gambling: A meta-analytic review

“…For disordered gambling, some studies have reported positive correlations with financial motives, which remained after statistically controlling for multiple covariates including the shared variance with other gambling motives (e.g., [24][25][26]. However, other studies reported that a positive bivariate association was attenuated when the shared variance with other motives was partialed out (e.g., [27][28][29], and some other studies have failed to detect even basic differences in financial motives between groups with and without gambling problems (30,31). In one study (32), the proportion of people who endorsed a single item 'to win money' was lower among those with gambling problems compared to those who gamble without problems.…”