Me, myself and money: having a financially focused self-concept and its consequences for disordered gambling

Abstract

The article describes a test of the hypothesis that some people’s self-concept is overly focused on financial success and that this focus contributes to disordered gambling. Study 1 reported on the development and validation of the Financially Focused Scale (FFS) with a sample of community gamblers (N = 197). As predicted, participants whose self-concept was financially focused attached greater importance to the money they possess as a domain of self-worth. They also indicated that the money they possess is a more important domain of self-worth relative to other life domains. Importantly, greater financial focus was a positive predictor of disordered gambling severity and did so over and above other known predictors of disordered gambling severity (i.e. personal income, Big-Five personality domains, global self-esteem, personal relative deprivation and materialism). Study 2 (N = 220) replicated and extended the findings of Study 1 by examining the motivational mechanisms that may link being financially focused with disordered gambling severity. As hypothesized, monetary gambling motives mediated the relationship between participants’ FFS scores and disordered gambling severity. Having a financially focused self-concept may play a critical role in the development and maintenance of disordered gambling. Addressing this self-concept in treatment may help alleviate gambling disorder.

Keywords:

• Disordered gambling
• gambling motives
• money
• self-concept
• self-worth

Notes

1. In the interest of transparency, we note that participants also completed some of the measures used in Study 1. These were self-reported personal income, global self-esteem and personal relative deprivation. They also completed two other measures that were not considered in the present research. Correlations with the FFS in Study 2 mirrored those reported in Study 1. Specifically, FFS was not associated with personal income (r = .02, p = .68) whereas FFS was negatively associated with global self-esteem (r = −.33, p < .01) and positively associated with personal relative deprivation (r = .42, p < .01). Also, like Study 1, FFS predicted problem gambling severity (OR = 1.98, B_logit = .68, p < .01) above and beyond personal income (B_logit = .01, p = .81), self-esteem (B_logit = −.15, p = .18) and personal relative deprivation (B_logit = −.03, p = .81). This information was not included in the text for the sake of parsimony.