Abstract
Objectives
The present study investigated the five facets of mindfulness and nonattachment in individuals who gamble to identify latent profiles and explore descriptive differences in those profiles relative to etiological precursors to problem gambling.
Methods
An online convenience sample of 843 adults (59.91% male; Mage = 39.40 years; SD = 12.52) who gamble completed measures of mindfulness; nonattachment; gambling motivations, cognitions, frequency, and problem severity; and mental well/ill-being.
Results
Findings from a series of latent profile analyses supported a four-profile model, representing High, Moderate, and Low Mindfulness as well as a unique profile, Judgmentally Unaware, characterized by low levels of non-judging and acting with awareness. Individuals with the Judgmentally Unaware profile demonstrated more frequent gambling, stronger gambling motivations and gambling-related cognitions, more severe problem gambling, and poorer mental health.
Conclusions
This study extends prior findings by clarifying nuances among specific profiles of mindfulness that could bear on levels of problem gambling severity. For groups with high mindfulness and low gambling problem severity, mindfulness interventions could positively inform harm-reduction strategies. However, for a novel “Judgmentally Unaware” group, who are both self-critical and inattentive to their gambling behaviors, more research is needed to identify traits that serve as risk or protective factors in the development and maintenance of problem gambling behavior. Across groups, mindfulness is a promising framework to guide investigations into prevention and intervention with individuals who experience gambling problems.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability Statement
All data are available at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/8g6s9/?view_only=a68de1b6db8246b78484d94b18ffb4aa).
References
Aguinis, H., Villamor, I., & Ramani, R. S. (2021). MTurk research: Review and recommendations. Journal of Management, 47(4), 823–837. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320969787
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.
Asparouhov, T., & Muthén, B. (2014). Auxiliary variables in mixture modeling: Using the BCH method in Mplus to estimate a distal outcome model and an arbitrary secondary model. Mplus Web Notes, 21(2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2014.915181
Baer, R. A., Smith, G. T., Hopkins, J., Krietemeyer, J., & Toney, L. (2006). Using self-report assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness. Assessment, 13(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191105283504
Baker, A. K., & Garland, E. L. (2019). Autonomic and affective mediators of the relationship between mindfulness and opioid craving among chronic pain patients. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 27(1), 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000225.Autonomic
Baker, T. B., Piper, M. E., McCarthy, D. E., Majeskie, M. R., & Fiore, M. C. (2004). Addiction motivation reformulated: An affective processing model of negative reinforcement. Psychological Review, 111(1), 33–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.111.1.33
Barnes, G. M., Welte, J. W., Tidwell, M. C. O., & Hoffman, J. H. (2015). Gambling and substance use: Co-occurrence among adults in a recent general population study in the United States. International Gambling Studies, 15(1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2014.990396
Billi, R., Stone, C. A., Marden, P., & Yeung, K. (2014). The Victorian Gambling Study: A longitudinal study of gambling and health in Victoria, 2008–2012. Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-014-9528-8
Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., Abbey, S., Speca, M., Velting, D., & Devins, G. (2004). Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(3), 230–241. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.bph077
Blaszczynski, A., & Nower, L. (2002). A pathways model of problem and pathological gambling. Addiction, 97(5), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00015.x
Bowen, S., & Enkema, M. C. (2014). Relationship between dispositional mindfulness and substance use: Findings from a clinical sample. Addictive Behaviors, 39(3), 532–537. https://doi.org/10.1038/jid.2014.371
Bowen, S., Chawla, N., & Marlatt, G. A. (2010). Mindfulness-based relapse prevention for the treatment of substance use disorders: A clinician’s guide. Guilford Press.
Bravo, A. J., Boothe, L. G., & Pearson, M. R. (2016). Getting personal with mindfulness: A latent profile analysis of mindfulness and psychological outcomes. Mindfulness, 7(2), 420–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-015-0459-7
Bravo, A. J., Pearson, M. R., & Kelley, M. L. (2018). Mindfulness and psychological health outcomes: A latent profile analysis among military personnel and college students. Mindfulness (NY), 9(1), 258–270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0771-5
Brewer, J. A., Bowen, S., Smith, J. T., Marlatt, G. A., & Potenza, M. N. (2010). Mindfulness-based treatments for co-occurring depression and substance use disorders: What can we learn from the brain? Addiction, 105(10), 1698–1706. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02890.x
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822
Byrne, B. (2013). Structural equation modeling with AMOS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming. Routledge.
Chambers, R., Lo, B. C. Y., & Allen, N. B. (2008). The impact of intensive mindfulness training on attentional control, cognitive style, and affect. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 32(3), 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-007-9119-0
Chandler, J., & Shapiro, D. (2016). Conducting clinical research using crowdsourced convenience samples. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12(1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093623
Chio, F. H., Lai, M. H., & Mak, W. W. (2018). Development of the Nonattachment Scale-Short Form (NAS-SF) using item response theory. Mindfulness, 9(4), 1299–1308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0874-z
Christopher, M., Ramsey, M., & Antick, J. (2013). The role of dispositional mindfulness in mitigating the impact of stress and impulsivity on alcohol-related problems. Addiction Research and Theory, 21(5), 429–434. https://doi.org/10.3109/16066359.2012.737873
Daughters, S. B., Lejuez, C. W., Strong, D. R., Brown, R. A., Breen, R. B., & Lesieur, H. R. (2005). The relationship among negative affect, distress tolerance, and length of gambling abstinence attempt. Journal of Gambling Studies, 21(4), 363–378.
de Lisle, S. M., Dowling, N. A., & Allen, J. S. (2012). Mindfulness and problem gambling: A review of the literature. Journal of Gambling Studies, 28(4), 719–739. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-011-9284-7
de Lisle, S., Dowling, N. A., & Allen, J. S. (2014). Mechanisms of action in the relationship between mindfulness and problem gambling behaviour. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 12(2), 206–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-014-9475-4
Demetrovics, Z., Urbán, R., Nagygyörgy, K., Farkas, J., Zilahy, D., Mervó, B., Reindl, A., Ágoston, C., Kertész, A., & Harmath, E. (2011). Why do you play? The development of the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ). Behavior Research Methods, 43(3), 814–825. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0091-y
Devos, M. G., Clark, L., Bowden-Jones, H., Grall-Bronnec, M., Challet-Bouju, G., Khazaal, Y., Maurage, P., & Billieux, J. (2020). The joint role of impulsivity and distorted cognitions in recreational and problem gambling: A cluster analytic approach. Journal of Affective Disorders, 260, 473–482.
Diallo, T. M. O., Morin, A. J. S., & Lu, H. Z. (2016). Impact of misspecifications of the latent variance–covariance and residual matrices on the class enumeration accuracy of growth mixture models. Structural Equation Modeling, 23(4), 507–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2016.1169188
Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13
Dixon, M. J., Gutierrez, J., Stange, M., Larche, C. J., Graydon, C., Vintan, S., & Kruger, T. B. (2019). Mindfulness problems and depression symptoms in everyday life predict dark flow during slots play: Implications for gambling as a form of escape. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 33(1), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000435
Eisenlohr-Moul, T. A., Walsh, E. C., Charnigo, R. J., Jr., Lynam, D. R., & Baer, R. A. (2012). The “what” and the “how” of dispositional mindfulness: Using interactions among subscales of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire to understand its relation to substance use. Assessment, 19(3), 276–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191112446658
Ferguson, S. L., Moore, G., & E. W., & Hull, D. M. (2020). Finding latent groups in observed data: A primer on latent profile analysis in Mplus for applied researchers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 44(5), 458–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025419881721
Ferris, J. A., & Wynne, H. J. (2001). The Canadian Problem Gambling Index (pp. 1–59). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. https://doi.org/10.1037/t00772-000
Hara, K., Adams, A., Milland, K., Savage, S., Callison-Burch, C., & Bigham, J. P. (2018). A data-driven analysis of workers’ earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 2018-April. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174023
Hayes, A. F., & Coutts, J. J. (2020). Use omega rather than Cronbach’s alpha for estimating reliability. But…. Communication Methods and Measures, 14(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2020.1718629
Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 537–559. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611419671
Horton, J. J., & Chilton, L. B. (2010). The labor economics of paid crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the 11th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce - EC ’10, July, 209. https://doi.org/10.1145/1807342.1807376
IBM Corp. Released 2019. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Delta.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy/bpg016
Karyadi, K. A., & Cyders, M. A. (2015). Elucidating the association between trait mindfulness and alcohol use behaviors among college students. Mindfulness, 6(6), 1242–1249. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-015-0386-7
Karyadi, K. A., VanderVeen, J. D., & Cyders, M. A. (2014). A meta-analysis of the relationship between trait mindfulness and substance use behaviors. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 143(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.07.014
Kennedy, R., Clifford, S., Burleigh, T., Waggoner, P. D., Jewell, R., & Winter, N. J. (2020). The shape of and solutions to the MTurk quality crisis. Political Science Research and Methods, 8(4), 614–629.
Kim, H. S., & Hodgins, D. C. (2017). Reliability and validity of data obtained from alcohol, cannabis, and gambling populations on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 31(1), 85–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000219
Kimmes, J. G., Durtschi, J. A., & Fincham, F. D. (2017). Perception in romantic relationships: A latent profile analysis of trait mindfulness in relation to attachment and attributions. Mindfulness, 8(5), 1328–1338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0708-z
Kline, R. B. (2016). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (Fourth Edition). The Guilford Press.
Kroenke, K., Spitzer, R. L., & Williams, J. B. (2001). The PHQ-9: Validity of a brief depression severity measure. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16(9), 606–613. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2001.016009606.x
Lakey, C. E., Campbell, W. K., Brown, K. W., & Goodie, A. S. (2007). Dispositional mindfulness as a predictor of the severity of gambling outcomes. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(7), 1698–1710. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.05.007
Lam, K. F. Y., Lim, H. A., Kua, E. H., Griva, K., & Mahendran, R. (2018). Mindfulness and cancer patients’ emotional states: A latent profile analysis among newly diagnosed cancer patients. Mindfulness, 9(2), 521–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0794-y
Lee, H. P., Chae, P. K., Lee, H. S., & Kim, Y. K. (2007). The five-factor gambling motivation model. Psychiatry Research, 150(1), 21–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2006.04.005
Litman, L., Robinson, J., & Abberbock, T. (2017). TurkPrime.com: A versatile crowdsourcing data acquisition platform for the behavioral sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 49(2), 433–442. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0727-z
Lo, Y., Mendell, N. R., & Rubin, D. B. (2001). Testing the number of components in a normal mixture. Biometrika, 88(3), 767–778.
Lorains, F. K., Cowlishaw, S., & Thomas, S. A. (2011). Prevalence of comorbid disorders in problem and pathological gambling: Systematic review and meta-analysis of population surveys. Addiction, 106(3), 490–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2010.03300.x
Marchica, L. A., Mills, D. J., Keough, M. T., & Derevensky, J. L. (2020). Exploring differences among video gamers with and without depression: Contrasting emotion regulation and mindfulness. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 23(2), 119–125. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0451
Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012). Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Behavior Research Methods, 44(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0124-6
Maynard, B. R., Wilson, A. N., Labuzienski, E., & Whiting, S. W. (2018). Mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of disordered gambling: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Research on Social Work Practice, 28(3), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731515606977
McKeith, C. F. A., Rock, A. J., & Clark, G. I. (2017). Trait mindfulness, problem-gambling severity, altered state of awareness and urge to gamble in poker-machine gamblers. Journal of Gambling Studies, 33(2), 617–632. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-016-9635-5
Medvedev, O. N., Titkova, E. A., Siegert, R. J., Hwang, Y. S., & Krägeloh, C. U. (2018). Evaluating short versions of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire using Rasch analysis. Mindfulness, 9(5), 1411–1422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0881-0
Mellis, A. M., & Bickel, W. K. (2020). Mechanical Turk data collection in addiction research: Utility, concerns and best practices. Addiction, 115(10), 1960–1968. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15032
Mishra, S., & Carleton, R. N. (2017). Use of online crowdsourcing platforms for gambling research. International Gambling Studies, 17(1), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2017.1284250
Moghaddam, J. F., Yoon, G., Dickerson, D. L., Kim, S. W., & Westermeyer, J. (2015). Suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in five groups with different severities of gambling: Findings from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. The American Journal on Addictions, 24(4), 292–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajad.12197
Muthén, B., & Muthén, L. (2017). Mplus (pp. 507–518). Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Nower, L., & Blaszczynski, A. (2017). Development and validation of the Gambling Pathways Questionnaire (GPQ). Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 31(1), 95–109. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000234
Nower, L., Derevensky, J. L., & Gupta, R. (2004). The relationship of impulsivity, sensation seeking, coping, and substance use in youth gamblers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 18(1), 49. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-164X.18.1.49
Nower, L., Eyrich-Garg, K. M., Pollio, D. E., & North, C. S. (2015). Problem gambling and homelessness: Results from an epidemiologic study. Journal of Gambling Studies, 31(2), 533–545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-013-9435-0
Nylund, K. L., Asparouhov, T., & Muthén, B. O. (2007). Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling: A Monte Carlo simulation study. Structural Equation Modeling, 14(4), 535–569. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705510701575396
Ophir, Y., Sisso, I., Asterhan, C. S., Tikochinski, R., & Reichart, R. (2020). The Turker blues: Hidden factors behind increased depression rates among Amazon’s Mechanical Turkers. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(1), 65–83.
Owen, B., Heisterkamp, B., Halfmann, A., & Vorderer, P. (2018). Trait mindfulness and problematic smartphone use. In D. Grimes, Q. Wang, & H. Lin (Eds.), Health psychology research focus. Empirical studies of contemplative practices (pp 181–206). Hauppauge: Nova Science.
Paltun, S. C., Altunsoy, N., Özdemir, S. D., & Okay, I. T. (2017). Does trait mindfulness level affect quitting cannabis use? A six week follow-up study. Revista De Psiquiatria Clinica, 44(6), 139–144. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-60830000000139
Pearson, M. R., Lawless, A. K., Brown, D. B., & Bravo, A. J. (2015). Mindfulness and emotional outcomes: Identifying subgroups of college students using latent profile analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 76, 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.009
Raylu, N., & Oei, T. P. (2004). Role of culture in gambling and problem gambling. Clinical Psychology Review, 23(8), 1087–1114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2003.09.005
Reid, R. C., Bramen, J. E., Anderson, A., & Cohen, M. S. (2014). Mindfulness, emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and stress proneness among hypersexual patients. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 70(4), 313–321. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22027
Ryan, R. M., & Frederick, C. (1997). On energy, personality, and health: Subjective vitality as a dynamic reflection of well-being. Journal of Personality, 65(3), 529–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1997.tb00326.x
Sahdra, B., Ciarrochi, J., & Parker, P. (2016). Nonattachment and mindfulness: Related but distinct constructs. Psychological Assessment, 28(7), 819–829. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000264
Shapiro, D. N., Chandler, J., & Mueller, P. A. (2013). Using Mechanical Turk to study clinical populations. Clinical Psychological Science, 1(2), 213–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702612469015
Single, A., & Keough, M. T. (2021). Examining the prospective associations between mindfulness facets and substance use in emerging adulthood. Alcohol and Alcoholism, 56(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agaa112
Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B., & Löwe, B. (2006). A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: The GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166(10), 1092–1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092
Stewart, S. H., & Zack, M. (2008). Development and psychometric evaluation of a three-dimensional Gambling Motives Questionnaire. Addiction, 103(7), 1110–1117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02235.x
Suomi, A., Jackson, A. C., Dowling, N. A., Lavis, T., Patford, J., Thomas, S. A., Harvey, P., Abbott, M., Bellringer, M. E., Koziol-McLain, J., & Cockman, S. (2013). Problem gambling and family violence: Family member reports of prevalence, family impacts and family coping. Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health, 3(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/2195-3007-3-13
Tein, J. Y., Coxe, S., & Cham, H. (2013). Statistical power to detect the correct number of classes in latent profile analysis. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 20(4), 640–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2013.824781
Tomlinson, E. R., Yousaf, O., Vittersø, A. D., & Jones, L. (2018). Dispositional mindfulness and psychological health: A systematic review. Mindfulness, 9(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0762-6
Welte, J. W., Barnes, G. M., Tidwell, M. C. O., Hoffman, J. H., & Wieczorek, W. F. (2015). Gambling and problem gambling in the United States: Changes between 1999 and 2013. Journal of Gambling Studies, 31(3), 695–715. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-014-9471-4
Williams, A. D., Grisham, J. R., Erskine, A., & Cassedy, E. (2012). Deficits in emotion regulation associated with pathological gambling. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51(2), 223–238.
Williams, R. J., Volberg, R. A., & Stevens, R. M. (2012). The population prevalence of problem gambling: Methodological influences, standardized rates, jurisdictional differences, and worldwide trends. Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre.
Funding
Funding from the second author’s university covered the costs associated with this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
JS: conceptualized the study and wrote the paper. DM: analyzed the data, wrote the results, and collaborated with the editing of the final manuscript. WA: collaborated with data analysis and editing of the final manuscript. LN: collaborated in the writing and editing of the final manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics Approval
Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Texas Tech University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stanmyre, J.F., Mills, D.J., Anthony, W.L. et al. Mindfulness Profiles Among Gamblers: Exploring Differences in Gambling Behaviors, Motivations, Cognitions, and Mental Health. Mindfulness 13, 339–350 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01791-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01791-6