The Role of Personal Values in Gambling: A Preliminary Study with Italian Adolescents

Abstract

Values have been defined as trans-situational goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s life to select modes, means, and actions. Despite values being relevant predictors of behaviors, their role in shaping adolescents’ gambling ones has been under investigated. Specifically, the present study aimed at exploring whether and which values may be protective or risk factors for gambling behaviors, this also considering gender differences. Respondents were 237 adolescents (aged from 14 to 19; 58.2% female), recruited from three Italian high schools, who were asked to fill in a self-report and anonymous online questionnaire investigating their values and gambling behaviors. Specifically, the Portrait Values Questionnaire and the South Oaks Gambling Screen: Revised for Adolescents were used. Results showed that males were keener to adopt more frequently gambling behaviors, this also being more problematic, compared to their female counterparts. Despite conservation and openness to change values seem not to influence gambling behaviors, self-transcendence and self-enhancement values respectively negatively and positively predict gambling problems. More interestingly, self-transcendence values seem to work better as protective factors toward the severity of this risk behavior especially for the male subsample. Implications for preventive and promotional interventions with adolescents are discussed.

Keywords:

• Adolescents
• gambling
• gender differences
• personal values
• risk behaviors

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study; in the case of minor participants, this was obtained from their parents.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available because of local legal and privacy restrictions (Italian Data Protection Code—Legislative Decree No. 196/2003). However, the raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript can be made available by the first author to qualified researchers upon request.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesca Danioni

Francesca Danioni received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy, in April 2019. From July 2019 she is a post-doc researcher in the same University at the Faculty of Education. She collaborates at the Family Studies and Research University Center. Her research interests mainly focus on family relations, gratitude, human values and their assessment.

Sonia Ranieri

Sonia Ranieri is Associate Professor in Social Psychology at the Faculty of Education, Catholic University of Piacenza; member of the Internal Advisory Committee of the Atheneum Center for Family Studies and Research at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy. Professor of Personality and Deviance: Individual and Psychosocial Aspects, Family Ties Psychology, and Social Psychology, Faculty of Education, Università Cattolica of Piacenza and Milan. Her major research interests include family relationships, psychosocial adjustment and well-being in adolescence and young adulthood, adoptive families, coparental alliance, intergenerational transmission of values, family enrichment programs.

Daniela Villani

Daniela Villani is a Researcher in General Psychology at the Faculty of Education at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy, where she is Professor of General Psychology and Psychology of Personality. Her research interests include the promotion of emotional health and well-being both in offline and online contexts through the analysis of individual characteristics.