Ricerc@Sapienza

Emotion regulation is described as an important mediator factor in one of the "pathways model" of Gambling Disorder; emotional vulnerability is proposed as a determining factor combined with ecological factors, conditioning processes and cognitive models, which are the factors underlying the development and maintenance of dependent behaviour.
It has been widely demonstrated that an alteration in the processing of emotions can influence the decision-making processes. It is not clear whether emotions can be considered as a key factor leading to "good" or "bad" decisions, instead, it would be useful, to investigate the relationship between circumstances and emotions by considering them as a guide for human behaviour.
The study sample will consist of individuals affected by Gambling Disorder (GD) and Healthy Control (HC). All subjects in this study will be assessed for emotion regulation, decision-making, mood disorders, addiction characteristics and addictive behaviours. A specific decision-making task will be created assessing the relationship between emotions and decision-making processes.
The primary aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between mood disorder and the emotion regulation in GD, thus the concurrent aim is to investigate whether the emotional dysregulation can influence decision making performance.
The study will evaluate any variability in the magnitude of the effects among different tasks and questionnaires and the impact of direct relationship between emotions and their influence on the decision-making processes.