Characteristics of regular gamblers in Italy: The role of control and emotion regulation

Objective: the main purpose of this study is to investigate the emotional and temperamental characteristics associated with gambling in Italy and to compare different groups of people on the basis of their risk of gambling: low-risk gamblers, problem gamblers, and pathological gamblers. Particularly, we examined the possible discriminant functions of perception of control, locus of control (whether internal or chance-based; that is, devoted to fate), and emotion-regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression). Method: a total of 251 adult regular gamblers (142 males and 109 females) recruited from different betting and bingo halls completed self-report questionnaire…