Gambling and Psychologists Not Always on the Same Page
Not all sociologists perceived gambling as deviant behavior.
Some were careful to point out its socially adaptive and non-deviant dimensions.
Sociologists who adopted this perspective typically conducted ethnographic or participant-observation studies.
In 1967, after studying race track patrons, Robert Herman rejected the idea that gambling is either deviant or a form of escapism.
Observing members of several social classes betting on horse races, he was impressed with the bettors' disciplined composure and rational decision making.
Herman concluded that horse race gamblers emulated traditional entrepreneurial practices.
In 1968, Marvin Scott published a fascinating study of the race track. Drawing upon a lifetime of personal experience, Scott reported that the world of horse racing centers on problems of information.
Trainers of horses seek to withhold information concerning their horses in order to perpetuate betting coups, whereas bettors seek to uncover the horses' capabilities and the trainers' intentions.
He analyzed racing from a games theory framework, with the information game taking center stage. Scott emphasized that horse race bettors, in their study of form and betting patterns, are engaging in a rational activity.
Although he acknowledged that some deviant types such as touts (who contact several racing patrons before a race and for a fee 'give each patron a different horse as the sure winner), and unethical horse trainers can be found at the racetrack, the vast majority of gamblers are not deviants but ordinary people searching for the right horse to bet.
Gamblers are adhering to the same norms of rationality that guide everyday situations.
In a 1982 work, written after a study of racetrack patrons, it was also noted that once psychiatric models models and deviance labels are set aside the behavior of the vast majority of regular horse players can be accepted as normal, functional, and rational.
Participant observation revealed that the racetrack was frequented mostly by ordinary people rather than by the colorful, Runyonesque characters of popular stereotypes.
In 1970, Louis Zurcher, observing participants in friendly poker games, introduced the concept of an 'ephemeral role' to describe behavior patterns that exist only within a gambling situation.
Poker playing provides the participants with temporary satisfactions.
The subjects of the study were not gamblers on the fringes of society but professional workers and college professors.
Zurcher didn't study gambling from a social problem perspective, but instead sought to identify some of the social-psychological benefits that derive from the widely played game of poker.
David Hayano, a part-time poker player, chronicled the life and work of professional poker players, reporting that professional poker playing had evolved from 'a profession composed largely of self-admitted cheaters to one in which public elite professionals are negotiating for respectability and public acceptance'.
Hayano concluded that increasing media coverage of poker tournaments and more favorable public opinion has enhanced the image of professional poker playing.