Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Understanding the psychology of mobile gambling: A behavioural synthesis

James, Richard J.E.; O'Malley, Claire; Tunney, Richard J.

Understanding the psychology of mobile gambling: A behavioural synthesis Thumbnail


Authors

Richard J.E. James

Richard J. Tunney



Abstract

This manuscript reviews the extant literature on key issues related to mobile gambling and considers whether the potential risks of harm emerging from this platform are driven by pre-existing comorbidities or by psychological processes unique to mobile gambling. We propose an account based on associative learning that suggests this form of gambling is likely to show distinctive features compared with other gambling technologies. Smartphones are a rapidly growing platform on which individuals can gamble using specifically designed applications, adapted websites or text messaging. This review considers how mobile phone use interacts with psychological processes relevant to gambling, the games users are likely to play on smartphones, and the interactions afforded by smartphones. Our interpretation of the evidence is that the schedules of reinforcement found in gambling interact with the ways in which people tend to use smartphones that may expedite the acquisition of maladaptive learned behaviours such as problem gambling. This account is consistent with existing theories and frameworks of problem gambling and has relevance to other forms of mobile phone use.

Citation

James, R. J., O'Malley, C., & Tunney, R. J. (2017). Understanding the psychology of mobile gambling: A behavioural synthesis. British Journal of Psychology, 108(3), 608-625. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12226

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Oct 18, 2016
Publication Date Aug 1, 2017
Deposit Date Mar 14, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal British Journal of Psychology
Print ISSN 0007-1269
Electronic ISSN 2044-8295
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 108
Issue 3
Pages 608-625
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12226
Related Public URLs http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37871/

Files

Published Journal Article (204 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2016 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the British Psychological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.




You might also like



Downloadable Citations