Description:
Flow activities (e.g. sports and gaming) have been associated with positive affect and
prolonged engagement. In the gambling field, modern electronic gaming machines
(EGMs, including modern slot machines) have drawn concern as a potentially flow inducing activity that may be associated with gambling-related harms. Current research
has heavily relied on self-reported flow, and further insights may be afforded by
physiological methods. We present data from three separate experiments in which self reported gambling flow and cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP; a measure of sympathetic
nervous system arousal) were examined. Male undergraduate participants gambled on
a genuine EGM in a laboratory setting for a period of at least 15 min, and completed
the Flow subscale of the game experience questionnaire (GEQ). Aggregated data were
analyzed using multilevel regression. Although EGM gambling was not associated with
significant changes in PEP across participants, we found that self-reported flow states
were associated with significant decreases in PEP during the first five minutes of EGM
use. Thus, participants who experienced flow showed a greater sympathetic nervous
system response to the onset of gambling. Though these effects were consistent in
experiments 1 and 2, in experiment 3 the effect was inverted during the same time
window. We conclude that flow during EGM gambling appears to be associated with
early changes in sympathetic nervous system activity, but stress that more research is
needed to characterize boundary conditions and moderating factors.
Source Repository:
UBC Dataverse
Series:
UBC Research Data Collection
Access:
Public
URL:
https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/JFR1B3
Publication date:
2020-02-14
Subjects:
Keywords: