Future of Gambling and Emerging Technologies Lab researchers Heli Hagfors, Hannu Jouhki, and Ilkka Vuorinen have written a featured article on Tampere University’s Alusta! platform, which provides a forum for research-based public discussion. The article offers insights into their latest research findings on the role of basic psychological needs in gambling and gaming problems.
Their studies provide both current and longitudinal support for earlier findings showing that certain gambling motives, particularly escaping difficult emotions and thoughts, winning money, and seeking excitement, are consistently associated with gambling problems. They further demonstrate that when gambling for money is accompanied by frustration of basic psychological needs, it predicts gambling problems especially strongly.
Hagfors, Jouhki, and Vuorinen also highlight that a materialistic value orientation, emphasizing possessions and financial success, is associated with more severe gambling problems. Across the studies included in each of their doctoral research, frustration of basic psychological needs was consistently linked to the severity of both gambling and digital gaming problems, supporting the assumptions of self-determination theory regarding the connection between general dissatisfaction and the emergence of specific problem behaviors.