Investigating the Relationship Between Escape and Gambling Behavior

Recent research suggests that there is a potentially strong relationship between gambling as a means of escape and the presence of pathological gambling. The goal of the present study was to establish whether there was a correlation between endorsing gambling as a means of escape and how participants played video poker in a laboratory setting. Forty eight participants completed several questionnaires and then played video poker. Results demonstrated that endorsement of gambling as a means of escape, as measured by the Gambling Functional Assessment (Dixon & Johnson, 2007), was significantly positively correlated with number of credits risked during video-poker play. It was not, however, correlated with number of hands played or number of errors made. The results therefore support the idea that escape and gambling have a unique relationship and suggest that this relationship may display itself as increased risk taking