Gambling motivation and involvement: A review of social

covering 58 of the 60 distinct cultural areas of the world as defined by anthropologist
Peter Murdock in the World Ethnographic Sample [286]. Statistical regression
analysis showed that four factors emerged as co-varying with the presence and
intensity of gambling, explaining 68 percent of the observed variation:
• presence of domestic commercial money (positive)
• presence of socioeconomic inequality (positive)
• society nomadic or semi-nomadic and more than half of its food supply coming
from animal husbandry (negative)
• location in North America (positive)
The present author has discussed these findings at length elsewhere [283], offering
alternative or complementary explanations to those suggested by Pryor from his utility
theory perspective. To assist the reader, a brief recapitulation of that discussion
follows here. Commercial money makes it easier to gamble, especially in cultures
with elaborate exchange systems where items carry social and cultural meanings
that supersede their use value. Where there is socioeconomic inequality, those who
are poor are aware of the affluence of the rich and dream of becoming affluent themselves,
a dream that promotes gambling. Nomadic peoples can bring with them only
a limited stock of items necessary for survival and many of them do not use money.
To lose these items at gambling could mean disaster for a family and to win more of
them would be of very limited utility, hence gambling tends to be uncommon. Location
in North America refers in this cross-cultural sample to first nation peoples.
With the exception of tribes in the arctic and sub-arctic area, gambling was usually
prevalent and intense among the North American first nation peoples. Gambling
had important inter-tribal functions that spread games and the practice of gambling
over the continent and sustained it at a high level of intensity.
Pryor’s [144] cross-cultural statistical study on gambling and those on “games of
chance” have examined quite a few other social, cultural and psychological factors.
The correlations (negative or positive) with gambling claimed to have been found in
these studies are either related to the four factors mentioned above or questionable
[283, 287, 288]. An ocular inspection of a map showing the geographical distribution
across cultures of gambling in the pre-colonial world does not suggest any other
obvious factors, apart from the four identified by Pryor and factors related to these,
correlating with gambling [283].
The other cross-cultural statistical study that identifies gambling per se used a
sample of 60 societies from the HRAF, of which 32 had an entry on gambling [289].
The study, which used also other bodies of source data, had the aim of testing the
two predictions, derived from evolutionary theory, that gambling has to do with
risk-seeking and that males and young adults are more prone to seek risk than are
females and older adults. The predictions to be tested were thus that: (a) males gamble
more, their gambling is riskier, and they more often have gambling problems,
and (b) the same would hold for young adults compared to older adults. The study
found support in the HRAF data for the first prediction but not for the second.
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