UBC’s Centre for Gambling Research opened last week. Courtesy Michele Ursino/Flickr
UBC’s new Centre for Gambling Research hopes to shed more light on the psychology of gambling addictions.
Luke Clark, director of the research centre and UBC psychology professor, had relocated his research from the University of Cambridge to UBC last year in order to stimulate gambling addiction research in the B.C. community.
“It’s quite a young [and] fast moving area of research because we’ve seen that a lot of the technology behind gambling has changed in the last decade or so — particularly machine gambling, which is one of the main things that we’re interested in,” said Clark. “This is a field that’s in the public spotlight at the moment and I think that the centre’s come about at a really good time here.”
The B.C. government, along with the B.C. Lottery Corporation (BCLC), has funded the centre with $2 million to conduct its research.
Clark also said that the centre’s intent is to stray from the historically conventional studies of gambling psychology. Only recently has problem gambling been considered within the same realm as other addictions and studied as such.
“Our research is really [focused on] the psychology and also the neuroscience of gambling behaviour,” said Clark. “I think our approach is somewhat unusual in that we look at both the features of the games themselves, [while] taking quite a modern public health approach to gambling. We really put the emphasis on that interaction or that interplay between the game and the gambler.”
According to Clark, one feature of the new centre is a state-of-the-art casino lab, housing modern slot machines and other ordinary casino games.
“There’s only been a couple other facilities like this around the world,” said Clark. “We’re starting to do some work looking at the state of immersion or absorption that a lot of machine gamblers describe where they just lose track of time or they lose track of their surroundings.”
This simulation of the casino environment will allow researchers to study the behaviour of gamblers under controlled conditions of the lab.
“It’s really going to help us focus in on particular features of the modern game, and also the psychological effects that the modern games have,” said Clark.
Since the opening of UBC’s Centre for Gambling Research, Clark and other members of his research team are aiming to expose the vulnerabilities of gamblers to addiction, while also exploring the importance of responsible gambling.