On Thursday, October 23rd, the latest sports betting scandal came to light when multiple figures across the NBA, including the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, were arrested for fraudulent gambling schemes. Sports betting is a mainstay of how many fans interact with the game, yet only became legal relatively recently, following the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to overturn PASPA in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. Since then, states have individually determined whether sports gambling will be allowed within their borders: 38 states have already legalized the extremely popular practice, which rakes in upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. As a result, Americans’ access to gambling has soared in recent years, raising concerns about gambling’s clear addictive potential and its deleterious effects on psychological well-being.

           The world of sports betting, where wagers on almost anything can be instantly placed online, has piqued millions of people’s interest in gambling and has made it unprecedentedly easy to become involved. Young boys are the most at-risk age group, and the American Psychological Association reports that people in their early 20s are being sucked into gambling at the highest rates. In 2018, the Canadian government surveyed over 38,000 teens ranging from 12 to 18 years old, and found that almost two-thirds reported having participated in some form of gambling within the past year. The younger kids are introduced to gambling, the more likely they are to develop gambling issues or disorders. While betting $25 on a basketball game may seem harmless, the psychological mechanisms underpinning gambling are addictive in the same way as substance use can be. The stakes are also high: Gambling costs people their savings, relationships, and happiness; in short, understanding the psychology of gambling is key to protecting people’s livelihoods and lives.

​

The Psychology of Gambling – Operant Conditioning

           Psychologically, gambling is addictive and is the only behavioral addictive disorder recognized by the DSM-5, or the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Prior to its re-classification in 2013 as “Gambling Disorder,” gambling issues were diagnosed by psychologists under the category of “Pathological Gambling,” terminology which has since evolved with evolving research demonstrating just how addictive gambling can be.

           From a psychological perspective, gambling’s addictiveness can be explained in terms of operant conditioning, which establishes that behaviors are acquired via the incentives of punishment and/or reward. According to Behaviorist psychologists, the schedule of reinforcement, like whether a behavior is rewarded after every attempt or only sporadically over time, influences how quickly the behavior is learned, how deeply it is ingrained, and how long it’ll take for the behavior to grow extinct once the behavior stops being accompanied by a reward. This principle that people can be conditioned to follow certain behavioral patterns is integral to the core concept of the slot machine. When behaviors are rewarded on a fixed schedule, for instance, every three presses of a lever yields a reward, people (and animals like mice) are relatively quick to catch on and stop performing the behavior once rewards cease. However, slot machines use the much more addicting variable schedule of reward, where the next play may yield $0, $15, or 2 billion dollars. The unpredictable schedule of reward hooks gamblers and makes the behavior incredibly hard to extinguish, where people are wired to continue gambling despite the fact that they so rarely win.

​

Cognitive Biases and Distortions

           In addition to the thrill of its unpredictability, gambling is so powerful because it impedes rationality using many different cognitive distortions, which gamblers should be educated about in order to avoid falling prey to. One prominent example is the Near-Miss Effect, where nearly missing the jackpot causes the brain’s reward network to become excited and increases motivation to play again. In casinos, bright lights and rewarding sensory feedback overstimulate the brain, creating the false illusion that one is winning. Gambling also gives rise to cognitive biases like the Illusion of Control, where gamblers falsely believe they can influence random outcomes. Gambling induces people to make poor choices such as buying into the logic error of the Gambler’s Fallacy, where people mistakenly presume that past events will predict future probabilities (i.e., I haven’t won in 5 rounds, so my chances of winning this round must be higher). The in-the-moment emotional peaks and valleys are set up to impede rational decision-making, giving way to a vicious cycle of Sunk Cost Fallacy, where people feel compelled to invest more and more to chase their losses. When a rare windfall is actually received, it may introduce Confirmation Bias, and—instead of walking away with their gains—people may proceed to put even more on the line due to the Hot Hand Fallacy. It is clear that gambling takes advantage of the human psyche in many different ways. As such, policymakers should consider how regulations or information campaigns can be implemented to curb gambling’s exploitative potential and help people make better, more rational decisions.

​

Neurobiological Underpinnings

           Moving from a psychological to a neuroscientific level, gambling’s addictive mechanisms are just as apparent: the act of gambling activates similar dopamine pathways and neurotransmitters as those triggered when people ingest alcohol or drugs. Gambling is associated with a lower volume of many different brain regions like the amygdala and hippocampus, suggesting that gamblers’ brains have an impaired capacity for emotional regulation and control. People addicted to gambling also display differences in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in executive functioning like impulse control and doesn’t fully develop until age 25. The ventral striatum, a region implicated in the reward system, and the insula, involved in self-awareness, also activate differently in the brains of addicted gamblers. These neuroscientific research findings have been pivotal in establishing that addictive gambling is not something that one can easily shake—like other addictions, it has a neurobiological basis.

​

Similarities to Substance Abuse Addictions

           Policy surrounding gambling should arguably be treated with the same level of concern as alcohol or drugs, as it is similarly addictive—tolerance to gambling increases over time, and quitting gambling can also trigger withdrawals. People with histories of childhood trauma or who are struggling with other psychological disorders are much more likely to also become addicted to gambling. For instance, around 4% of individuals receiving treatment for substance use also report issues with gambling. Additionally, gambling exploits people who are already grappling with other psychological issues, as 7% of people with Parkinson’s disease report gambling issues, compared to an overall 0.4 to 2% estimated prevalence rate among the adult population (which fluctuates from country to country). Men are about twice as likely to develop a gambling disorder as women, and people more inclined to risky or impulsive behaviors are more susceptible. Unfortunately, poorer or disadvantaged people, for whom winning money carries greater weight, are disproportionately affected.  Unlike alcohol or substance abuse disorders, though, the federal government does little to help addicted gamblers or fund support agencies. While cognitive behavioral therapy and other professional interventions are proven effective, many people struggling with gambling addictions are able to hide their vices and don’t seek help for years, often until it is too late.

​

The Solution

           As the recent scandal with the NBA has shown, increased access to sports gambling and gambling in general is more than likely to produce issues for society. Gambling is particularly problematic in two arenas that are appealing to younger audiences, video games and sports, and some countries like Belgium have banned addictive video game elements like loot boxes that allow kids to partake in gambling-like behaviors. The concern is that when kids are introduced to these minor forms of gambling, whether through sports or spending real money purchasing loot boxes (which may contain valuable prizes or be worthless), their likelihood of developing serious gambling issues down the line increases. As of now, a major source of concern is a lack of regulation, where gambling companies are able to actively advertise themselves to kids, coupled with a general lack of societal awareness or education about gambling’s insidious effects. The solution to this issue seems multi-pronged: regulatory legislation is needed to protect at-risk populations from developing gambling disorders, more resources are needed to help people who are struggling with addiction, and, of course, more research is needed to better understand how to curb its addictive mechanisms.

References

How Gambling Affects Your Brain. (2022, January 31). Gateway Foundation. Retrieved October 26, 2025, from https://www.gatewayfoundation.org/blog/how-gambling-affects-brain/

Kraus, S., Nower, L., & Mills, K. (2023, July). Speaking of Psychology: Will easier access to gambling mean more addiction? American Psychological Association. Retrieved October 26, 2025, from https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/gambling-addiction

Smith, A., Poon, C., Jones, G., Thawer, Z., & McCreary Centre
Society. (2021). Understanding the odds: Gambling among BC
youth aged 12–18. McCreary Centre Society.

Sohn, E. (2023, July 1). How gambling affects the brain and who is most vulnerable to addiction. Monitor on Psychology, 54(5). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/07/how-gambling-affects-the-brain

The Science Behind Gambling. Responsible Online Gaming Association. (n.d.). https://responsiblegambling.org/for-the-public/about-gambling/the-science-behind-gambling/ 

Potenza, M. N. (2013). Neurobiology of gambling behaviors. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 23(4), 660-667.