The effect of cultural backgrounds on risk-taking and gambling behaviours of immigrants
Humans face risks from very early in life. The definition and attitude towards risks varies in different cultural systems. (Raylu, 2004) In the scientific definition, the result of a lucky event, like the rolling of a dice, does not depend on the occurrence of other events meaning that lucky events are chance-based. Many gamblers attribute a lot of personal and social events to chance. Risk-taking has been an interesting phenomena for psychologist for decades. It has been shown that cultural history influences gambling behaviour and motivation for gambling. In Chinese culture, for example, parental approval has shown to be strongly correlated to increase exposure to gambling. (Darke, 1997) While gambling behaviour is previously studied with respect to different cultural groups, I suggest that immigration might have an strong effect on gambling behaviour of individuals. My suggested topic is to study the effect of cultural backgrounds on risk-taking and gambling behaviours of immigrants from developing countries who were not previously exposed to the Western culture, especially parts of the world that gambling is illegal. I propose to first, study this phenomenon by monitoring recent immigrants exposed to a new cultural system and find out if their gambling behaviour has changed. Second, determine the underlying causes and motivations for increased (or decreased) risk-taking behaviours of those individuals as a new perspective to understand their struggles and changes in their new value system.
By doing so, social workers and psychologists may have a strong tool to prevent recently migrated individuals who have a high risk of irresponsible or damaging gambling behaviour after the exposure of the new system according to their cultural groups. For some immigrants, controlling their risk-taking behaviours via counselling or treatment programs might help them to establish their new social lives.
References
Darke, P. R. (1997). Lucky events and beliefs in luck: Paradoxical effects on confidence and risk-taking. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 378–388.
Raylu, N. a. (2004). Role of culture in gambling and problem gambling. Clinical psychology review, 1087–1114.
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