A study in Ecuador involving gamblers and video gamers found that positive-affect urgency, an aspect of impulsivity, plays a larger role in gambling-related compulsivity, whereas negative urgency is more important in gaming-related compulsivity. The paper was published in Psychological Reports.
Impulsivity is the tendency to act quickly without fully considering possible consequences. One popular theoretical model of impulsivity (the UPPS-P model) posits that impulsivity consists of five related, but distinct aspects: negative urgency, positive urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking.
Negative urgency is the tendency to act rashly when experiencing distress, anger, anxiety, or other strong negative emotions. Positive urgency refers to impulsive behavior triggered by intense positive emotions, such as excitement or euphoria. Lack of premeditation means acting without sufficiently thinking ahead or weighing the likely results of one’s actions. Lack of perseverance involves difficulty maintaining attention and completing demanding or monotonous tasks. Sensation seeking is the desire for novel, exciting, or risky experiences.
María Jara-Rizzo, a researcher at the University of Guayaquil, and colleagues explored the extent to which impulsivity is associated with the compulsive features of problematic gambling behavior and problematic video game use. Compulsivity is the tendency to repeatedly perform behaviors despite little pleasure or benefit and despite harmful consequences. This happens because the behavior feels difficult to resist or relieves distress.
Study participants were 165 regular video gamers and 130 regular gamblers from the two largest cities in Ecuador. The average age of gamblers was 33 years, and 52 of them were women. The average age of video gamers was 23 years, and 39 of them were women.
To be included in the study, prospective participants needed to be over 18 years of age, not diagnosed with any neurodevelopmental, neurocognitive, or neurodegenerative disorders, and regularly engaging in either video gaming or gambling at least twice per week during the past 12 months. Participants who reported absolutely no symptoms of internet gaming disorder or gambling disorder were excluded from analyses. The researchers noted that 54% of gamblers met the diagnostic cutoff for gambling disorder, while 15% of gamers met the cutoff for internet gaming disorder.
Participants completed an online survey in which they reported their demographic information, frequencies of their gaming or gambling activity, and assessments of impulsivity, compulsivity, and symptoms of gambling and internet gaming disorders.
Results showed that gamblers tended to show more pronounced compulsivity compared to gamers. However, the two groups did not differ in average levels of any of the five aspects of impulsivity. Of the five aspects of impulsivity, more pronounced positive and negative urgency were associated with higher compulsivity.
The researchers created a statistical model for predicting compulsivity from impulsivity, age, sex, and whether the person was a gambler or a video gamer. Results showed that, on the whole sample, positive urgency was a significant predictor.
However, looking at the groups separately, positive urgency was a more important predictor of compulsivity in the group of gamblers than in the group of video gamers. In contrast, negative urgency was more strongly associated with compulsivity among gamers.
“The present findings demonstrate that while gamblers and gamers do not differ globally in impulsivity, compulsivity is higher among gamblers and its association with urgency facets differs across groups,” the study authors concluded. “These results suggest that executive dysfunction and positive-affect urgency play a larger role in gambling-related compulsivity, whereas negative urgency and maladaptive regulation of distress are more salient in gaming.”
The researchers explain that the link between negative urgency and gaming suggests that compulsive gaming functions primarily as a strategy to manage distress rather than to seek reward. Conversely, the association between positive urgency and gambling aligns with established models of frontostriatal dysfunction, where hypersensitivity to reward cues weakens voluntary control.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between compulsivity and impulsivity. However, it should be noted that the cross-sectional design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results. It is also limited by the fact that the two groups differed significantly in their levels of clinical severity, with a much higher percentage of gamblers meeting the diagnostic cutoff for a disorder than gamers.
The paper, “Differences in the Relationship Between Impulsivity and Compulsivity Between Video Gamers and Gamblers,” was authored by María Jara-Rizzo, Diego Erazo-Pérez, Jose C. Perales, and Jose A. Rodas.