Gray Peter B
Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
J Gambl Stud. 2004 Winter;20(4):347-71. doi: 10.1007/s10899-004-4579-6.
Few attempts have been made to incorporate evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives on gambling. This paper begins with the assumption that gambling represents a risky endeavor undertaken for the purpose of winning stakes. This assumption leads to the derivation from evolutionary theory of two hypotheses concerning the socio-demographic characteristics of gamblers: (1) gambling should be over-represented among males, and (2) among young adults. To test these hypotheses, data are drawn from three sources. A cross-cultural sample of 60 societies reveals that males are more often identified as gamblers than females, and these results do not appear to reflect reporting biases. The data are insufficient to enable conclusions about age patterns associated with gambling within this cross-cultural sample. Nationally representative studies of problem and pathological gamblers drawn from seven nation states show that such gamblers tend to be over-represented by young males, as predicted. Lastly, available demographic data on casino gambling hint at sex differences in the games played and the stakes wagered, but require further research for robust conclusions to be drawn.
很少有人尝试将进化和跨文化视角纳入对赌博的研究。本文开篇假设赌博是一种为赢取赌注而进行的冒险行为。基于这一假设，从进化理论中推导出了两个关于赌徒社会人口特征的假设：（1）男性在赌徒中所占比例应过高；（2）年轻人中赌徒比例应过高。为验证这些假设，数据来自三个来源。对60个社会的跨文化样本研究表明，男性比女性更常被认定为赌徒，且这些结果似乎并非反映报告偏差。这些数据不足以得出关于该跨文化样本中与赌博相关的年龄模式的结论。从七个国家抽取的具有全国代表性的问题和病态赌徒研究表明，正如预测的那样，这类赌徒中年轻男性所占比例往往过高。最后，关于赌场赌博的现有人口数据暗示了所玩游戏和所下赌注方面的性别差异，但需要进一步研究才能得出有力结论。
