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The Dark Triad and Disordered Gambling

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Abstract

Disordered gambling refers to persistent and recurrent patterns of problematic gambling behavior leading to clinically significant impairment or distress. The purpose of the present study was to examine the connections that the Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) had with disordered gambling in a sample of 572 undergraduate students (129 men, 443 women). Our analyses revealed that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were each related to disordered gambling. However, psychopathy was the only Dark Triad personality trait that had a unique association with the risk for disordered gambling when controlling for the other Dark Triad traits. The discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the connections between psychopathy and disordered gambling.

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Notes

  1. We also conducted a multiple regression analysis using the raw score for the DIGS instead of whether each participant met clinical criteria. The results of this analysis were extremely similar to those reported for the logistic regression. More specifically, main effects emerged for psychopathy (β = .29, t = 6.04, p < .001) and sex (β = .13, t = 3.15, p = .002). No other main effects or interactions emerged from this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, 212A Pryale Hall, Rochester, MI, 48309, USA

    David R. C. Trombly & Virgil Zeigler-Hill

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  1. David R. C. Trombly
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  2. Virgil Zeigler-Hill
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Correspondence to Virgil Zeigler-Hill.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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David R. C. Trombly declares that he has no conflict of interest. Virgil Zeigler-Hill declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Trombly, D.R.C., Zeigler-Hill, V. The Dark Triad and Disordered Gambling. Curr Psychol 36, 740–746 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9461-z

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