Elsevier

Psychiatry Research

Volume 206, Issue 1, 30 March 2013, Pages 50-55
Psychiatry Research

Personality correlates of pathological gambling derived from Big Three and Big Five personalitymodels

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2012.09.042Get rights and content

Abstract

Personality traits have proved to be consistent and important factors in a variety of externalizing behaviors including addiction, aggression, and antisocial behavior. Given the comorbidity of these behaviors with pathological gambling (PG), it is important to test the degree to which PG shares these trait correlates. In a large community sample of regular gamblers (N=354; 111 with diagnoses of pathological gambling), the relations between measures of two major models of personality – Big Three and Big Five – were examined in relation to PG symptoms derived from a semi-structured diagnostic interview. Across measures, traits related to the experience of strong negative emotions were the most consistent correlates of PG, regardless of whether they were analyzed using bivariate or multivariate analyses. In several instances, however, the relations between personality and PG were moderated by demographic variable such as gender, race, and age. It will be important for future empirical work of this nature to pay closer attention to potentially important moderators of these relations.

Introduction

The study of externalizing behavior from the perspective of personality has yielded valuable data regarding the correlates of substance use, aggression, and antisocial behavior (e.g., Jones et al., 2011, Kotov et al., 2010). Meta-analyses suggest that personality traits related to neuroticism, impulsivity, and antagonism are the largest and the most consistent of externalizing behaviors. The personality literature on pathological gambling (PG) is at a more nascent stage, at least compared to the literature on the aforementioned externalizing behaviors with which PG tends to be comorbid (e.g., Petry et al., 2005). The comorbidity of PG with these behaviors, particularly substance use and abuse, has resulted in a significant change in how PG will be categorized in the official diagnostic nosology. Pathological gambling, which is described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-4th Edition (DSM-IV-TR; APA, 2000) as a pattern of “persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior that disrupts personal, family, or vocational pursuits” (p. 671), is classified in the DSM-IV-TR as an “Impulse-Control Disorder.” This is likely to change in the DSM-5 (www.dsm5.org) such that PG is set to be included in the “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders” category.

Although there are potential advantages and disadvantages of this change (Petry, 2006), one benefit is that it is likely to result in a substantial increase in the study of PG from a variety of perspectives, including an examination of PG's personality correlates. Work of this nature is currently ongoing in the area of PG; a recent meta-analysis (MacLaren et al., 2011) found that traits related to neuroticism, disagreeableness, and disinhibition are among the most consistent personality correlates of PG. The authors of this meta-analysis suggest that the personality profile associated with PG is consistent with that found for substance use and other externalizing disorders. Similarly, research by Slutske et al. (2005) found that personality traits can help explain the statistical covariance between PG and substance use disorders. Findings such as these lend credence to the movement of PG from an impulse-control disorder to a category encompassing addictive disorders.

One limitation of the extant research on personality and PG is that many of the studies have relied on a single operationalization of personality such as measures of the Five-Factor Model (e.g., Bagby et al., 2007), Cloninger's seven-factor Temperament and Character model (e.g., Janiri et al., 2007), Tellegen's three-factor model (King et al., 2010) or Eysenck's three-factor model (e.g., Blanco et al., 2001). Although these models can be integrated in meaningful ways (Markon et al., 2005), it is advantageous to study these relations using more than one measure of personality simultaneously, so as to ensure that findings are not specific to a given assessment.

A second limitation of many existing personality-based examinations of PG is the focus on the bivariate associations between personality traits and PG. The failure to examine the relations between personality domains and PG simultaneously makes it impossible to examine the unique relations between personality and PG. This is particularly important given that many of the domains from most major models of personality tend to manifest some degree of inter-relation. For instance, the Five-Factor Model (FFM) domains, as assessed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1992), manifested correlations that ranged from −0.53 (Neuroticism–Conscientiousness) to 0.40 (Extraversion–Openness) in the data set used to develop norms for this instrument. The degree of overlap found among many traits may obscure the manner in which these traits are relatedto PG.

Finally, there has been little attention paid to moderators of the relations between personality and PG. This is unfortunate as the relations between personality and important clinical outcomes have been found to vary based on a number of factors including sample characteristics and assessment strategies (e.g., Jones et al., 2011, Samuel and Widiger, 2008). It is likely that the relations between personality and PG may be significantly stronger or weaker in the context of other variables such as gender, race, treatment status, and psychiatric comorbidity.

In the current study, we sought to address each of these issues. We examined the relations between personality and PG using two measures of the Big Five/FFM model of personality and an operationalization of Tellegen's three-factor model, which assesses three broad domains of negative emotionality, positive emotionality, and constraint, as well as 11 narrower subscales. In general, measures of these two models overlap substantially with significant convergence between Tellegen's negative emotionality factor and FFM neuroticism and antagonism, Tellegen's positive emotionality domain and FFM extraversion, and Tellegen's constraint domain and FFM conscientiousness (see Gaughan et al., 2009). We first examined the bivariate relations among these personality traits and PG with the expectation that traits related to negative emotionality/neuroticism, disconstraint, and disinhibition would manifest significant correlations. Second, we used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to derive personality factors found across the three measures and examined the bivariate and unique relations between the EFA factors and PG. Finally, we examined whether the relations between personality and PG were moderated by three demographic variables: gender, race, andage.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants included 368 frequent gamblers (i.e., gambled at least weekly), who were recruited using newspaper advertisements and word of mouth. Participants were excluded from the following analyses for lack of effort, inadequate familiarity with computers, and missing large portions of data; these exclusions resulted in a total sample of 354. The majority of participants were male (78%) with a mean age of 35.3 (S.D.=12.2; range: 18–64) who primarily self-identified as Caucasian (52%) or

Correlations among personality measures and pathological gambling

A p-value of <0.01 was used for all tests of statistical significance except for tests of moderation, which tend to be underpowered. For these analyses, a p-value of <0.05 was used so as to lower the probability of making type II errors. The two sets of domains from the measures of the Big Five and FFM manifested significant convergence with correlations ranging from 0.46 (Openness) to 0.79 (Neuroticism), with a median of 0.68 (see Table 1). In all cases, the convergent validity correlations

Discussion

A growing literature has begun to document the relations between general personality traits and PG with the suggestion that domains related to neuroticism, disinhibition, and interpersonal antagonism are among the most reliable correlates (MacLaren et al., 2011). These traits are similar to those related to other externalizing behaviors (e.g., Jones et al., 2011, Kotov et al., 2010), as well as personality disorders related to these behaviors such as antisocial and borderline personality

Acknowledgments

This research was partially support by grants from the Institute for Research on Gambling Disorders (JDM, JM, CEL, WKC and ASG) and the National Institutes of Health (Nos. K23 AA016936-JM and P30 DA027827-ASG, JM).

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