Dysfunctional impulsivity in online gaming addiction and engagement

mpulsivity has been shown to be related to both substance- andnon-substance addictions. In the case of internet gamingaddiction, on one hand, higher impulsivity and sensationseeking have been reported in problematic online gamers. On theother hand, problematic online gamers were also identified asintroverted, socially anxious, and generally inhibited inbehaviour. Our study investigates the role of dysfunctionalimpulsivity in gaming addiction. A sample of 1,510 Czech andSlovak online gamers completed a questionnaire that wasadvertised online and targeted the core of the gamingcommunity. Internet gaming addiction was measured using theAddiction-Engagement Questionnaire (Charlton & Danforth, 2010).Dysfunctional impulsivity was measured using the 11 items ofDickman’s (1990) sub-scale of the Impulsivity Inventory.Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated forvariables and a regression model was constructed usinghierarchical linear regression to determine the associationbetween online gaming addiction and dysfunctional impulsivity,while controlling for age, gender, and the frequency of onlinegaming. A set of chi-square tests was employed to compare thepatterns of addiction criteria among highly impulsive addictedgamers and non-impulsive addicted gamers. Althoughdysfunctional impulsivity was a good predictor of gamingaddiction (beta = .252), it actually explained only about 7% ofthe addiction variance. Problematic gamers high on impulsivityhad similar patterns of addiction criteria as non-impulsivegamers, with only one exception – they had a significantlyhigher tendency to relapse. There was no role of impulsivity ingaming engagement. The results suggest that dysfunctionalimpulsivity is a risk factor for online gaming addiction(similar to other addictions), but it does not have prominentexplanatory value in itself. Also, the results show thatproblematic gamers high on impulsivity are more prone torelapse and reinstatement.