Comparing justifications and permissive beliefs in relation to gambling severity

People use reasons to justify engaging in desirable behaviors. To tap such reasoning, two questionnaires were recently developed: one assessed justifications in gambling behavior, and one assessed permissive beliefs in other addictive behaviors, separating two constructs of deserving reward and defensive optimism. In this preregistered cross-sectional study, we compared these constructs in their associations with problem gambling severity, and with theoretically-related constructs – metacognition, reflection, and self-control – among 292 participants with gambling experience recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform. Justifications and Deserving Reward, but not Defensive Optimism, were positively correlated with Problem Gambling Severity Index at a bivariate level. Supporting our prediction, in our multiple regression model, Justifications were positively associated with Problem Gambling Severity Index. In this model, Deserving Reward did not reach significance and Defensive Optimism showed a negative association. Justifications, Deserving Reward, and Defensive Optimism were 1) not strongly explained by metacognition, reflection, nor self-control, and 2) appear as distinct constructs as indicated by psychometric modelling. Our findings indicate that justifications and permissive beliefs, despite their conceptual similarity, show different relationships with gambling severity. These data inform cognitive models of gambling and other addictive behaviors with implications for psychological therapies.