Gambling motivation and involvement: A review of social

In an appendix to Man, Play, and Games, Caillois discusses gambling in industrial
and other societies where people have plenty of leisure. There, gambling often
acquire a cultural significance that influence “art, ethics, economy and even life
experience” (p. 146). This influence is not very positive. Games of chance “tend
to replace work” and people get devoted to play, thereby becoming “nonchalant
addicts” and “eternal children” (p. 147). Caillois thus seems to argue that the structural
function of games of chance to provide hope to the dispossessed may be exaggerated
and ruin the morals and ambitions necessary for a sound society.
Among other major contributions to Huzinga’s and Caillois’ “armchair” type of
speculative play theory may be mentioned Eugen Fink’s Spiel als Weltsybol [247]
and related work [248], which, from a philosophical perspective, concludes that
play provides a symbolic re-enactment of the world where man can experience existential
freedom. The second chapter of Adolf Ellegard Jensen’s Mythos und Kult bei
Naturvölker: Religionswissenschaftliche Betrachtungen [249] discusses play from
much the same perspective as Huizinga. Carlo Montgardini’s Saggio sul gioco [250]
is a hotchpotch typical of much of Italian scholarship in the arts and humanities, in
which various speculations and theories are discussed at length with minimal doses
of empirical substance. None of these works have much to say about gambling.
Some contemporary scholars express a notion of gambling as “adult play”, or
as containing a salient play element, when underlining what they perceive to be
positive and benevolent effects of gambling. These effects may be to boost selfesteem,
serve existential needs and provide healthy stimulation [251, 252], offering
an escape from the suspense, conflict, and uncertainty of real life [70], allowing the
consumption of action and risk [202], experiencing “flow” [80], enjoying pleasant
telic or paratelic states [253], or providing existential optimism [254]. In the design
of casinos, the “play ground” concept is widely used [255].
In the past two decades, there has been a renewal of play studies within the social
sciences and the humanities, occasioned by computer and video games becoming
a major leisure activity. Contemporary game studies investigate the psychology of
computer and video games, the social contexts of and motives for playing, and the
cultural meanings expressed in game media and online gaming worlds [256–258].
Game studies are theoretically heterogeneous, incorporating elements for instance
from early play theory, cybernetics, narratology, cultural studies, sociology, social
learning theory and ethnology. Hitherto, game studies have not shown much interest
in gambling games. Some psychologists have suggested that computer and video
games may be addictive in the same way as gambling and psychoactive substances.
This view, however, has been questioned [259]. Because of the emergence of hybrid
forms of gaming and gambling, both online as well as on electronic machines, modern
play studies may in the future pay more attention to gambling.
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