General Strain Theory, BIS/BAS Levels, and Gambling Behavior

Abstract

This article extends Agnew's General Strain Theory (GST) in two ways: (a) by testing the model's utility in explaining gambling behavior and (b) by considering the role of BIS/BAS sensitivities as a potential moderator of the strain–gambling association. Drawing on Agnew and colleagues' (2002) call for considering personality traits as potential conditional variables for testing GST, we evaluate these extensions using data from a representative community sample of young adult males from South Florida. Results indicate that GST is a capable explanation of gambling behaviors generally, and that BIS/BAS sensitivities appear to condition the relationship between various strains and gambling behaviors.

This research is supported by grants R01 DA10772 and R01 DA017693 from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to R. Jay Turner.

Notes

¹Gambling, like many other forms of risky behavior, comprises an array of activities that includes both socially condoned activity and socially deleterious acts. Indeed, gambling activity shares many similar conceptual and measurement concerns that alcohol use does, including the notion that alcohol use per se may be socially condoned behavior, but that its misuse/overuse is stigmatized as deviant behavior and extreme deviations from the norm are characterized as addictions. Most studies of gambling behavior typically employ three categories of activities: social gambling, which encompasses the great majority of acts, largely entailing gambling with friends, occasional gambling, and gambling with predetermined and acceptable losses; pathological (or compulsive) gambling, which is defined by recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior that produces a number of adverse problems or consequences and is typically defined by employing the DSM-IV criterion of five or more problem behaviors; and problem gambling, which is a somewhat ambiguously term that includes gambling that produces adverse problems, but not enough to meet the DSM-IV definition of pathological gambling (Powell et al. 1999:1168). However, there are a number of conceptual and measurement problems that plague research into problem gambling, leading two authors to recently characterize the construct as “ill-defined” (Svetieva and Walker 2008:157).

²Carver (2004) posits that the relationship between BIS and BAS sensitivities and affect is more complicated. He argues that either type of motivation, approach or avoidance, can produce positive or negative affect depending on how well the action serving the motive is going (5).

³Twelve cases were omitted for the analysis due to missing data on various independent variables. Listwise deletion of cases has been found to be the most robust technique to handle missing at random data when the missing information is among independent variables (Allison 2002:6).

*Strain measures were also constructed based on wave 1 data and substituted in the analyses. The results paralleled those reported.

+p < .1; *p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed tests).

+p < .1; *p < .05; **p < .01 (two-tailed tests).

Predictions based on a 19-year-old non-Hispanic white, with the values of all other variables set to their respective means.

Predictions based on a 19-year-old non-Hispanic white, with the values of all other variables set to their respective means.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Eitle

DAVID EITLE is an Associate Professor at Montana State University. His research interests include exploring the etiology of criminal and deviant behavior among late adolescents and young adults, and investigating the nexus between racial and economic stratification, crime, and its social control. His work appears in such journals as Justice Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, Criminology, and Social Science Quarterly.

John Taylor

JOHN TAYLOR is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida State University and a faculty associate of The Center for Demography and Population Health. His recent publications include a study on the role of early self-derogation in disordered dieting (with Lacey Sischo and Patricia Yancey Martin), and a study on the conditional relationship between religiosity and psychological distress (with A. Henry Eliassen and Donald A. Lloyd).