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Understanding the Effects of Social Desirability
on Gambling Self-Reports
Abby L. Goldstein
1
&Natalie Vilhena-Churchill
2
&
Melanie Munroe
1
&Sherry H. Stewart
3
&
Gordon L. Flett
4
&Peter N. S. Hoaken
5
Published online: 20 June 2016
#Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Gambling self-reports may be subject to several types of bias, including social
desirability bias, which may undermine their utility for capturing gambling behaviour in both
research and clinical practice. Retrospective self-reports of gambling are frequently used to assess
patterns of behaviour over specific periods of time, but may not be as reliable as experience
sampling (ES) methods, which involve multiple assessments of gambling over the course of
several days. The purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of two aspects of social
desirability, impression management (IM) and self-deceptive enhancement (SDE), on the corre-
spondence between reports of gambling assessed via ES and retrospective recall using the
Gambling Timeline Followback (G-TLFB; Weinstock et al. Psychological Assessment,16,72–
80, 2004). Participants were 81 emerging adult gamblers who completed a 30-day ES study and a
retrospective assessment of their gambling. Although the overall association between social
desirability and gambling reports was minimal, the correspondence between retrospective and
ES reports was lower for those with higher scores on IM (for money won-lost) and SDE (for
money intended to risk). Gamblers who wish to present themselves in a favourable way –either
intentionally (IM) or unintentionally (SDE) –may be less reliable in their reports of gambling
when asked to reflect on an extended period of time compared to when asked to provide an in-the-
moment account of their gambling behaviour. These findings have important implications for
Int J Ment Health Addiction (2017) 15:1342–1359
DOI 10.1007/s11469-016-9668-0
*Abby L. Goldstein
abbyl.goldstein@utoronto.ca
1
Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, 9-174, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
2
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada
3
Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of
Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
4
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
5
Department of Psychology, Western University, London, ON, Canada
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