Gaming, gambling, risk taking, addictions and a developmental model of a pathology of man-machine relationships

ABSTRACT Links and interactions between gaming, gambling and risk taking were explored and discussed. In particular the phenomenon of excitement or arousal experienced by the participants of all these activities was examined and a demonstration of it was given in the workshop by recording the heart rate of participants as they played well-known games. The phenomena of addictions in general and gambling addictions in particular were described and discussed. A study on videogame addictions among adolescents was then reported and discussed and compared with studies of adolescent machine gamblers in the US and the UK. A developmental model was proposed outlining one possible path along which the development of machine gambling addictions could stem from an early pathology of man-machine relationships.