Social Presence and Social Facilitation in Gambling: Some Comments on Yokomitsu et al. (2022)

This brief commentary adds to the recent study by paper by Yokomitsu, Kono and Takada (2022). Their study examined social presence in gambling by experimentally investigating the effects of the presence of other people on risky betting among high-risk gamblers. This commentary argues that the paper by Yokomitsu et al. provided a highly selective review on available studies and omitted many of the key studies in the area of social presence and social facilitation in which their findings could have been compared. The commentary also briefly outlines a number of studies that have I co-authored in this area over the past three decades using a variety of different methodologies (e.g., non-participant observation studies, experiments, data mining of account-based tracking data), none of which were mentioned by Yokomitsu et al. despite their clear relevance to this area.

Automated summary

This commentary criticizes Yokomitsu et al.'s study for its selective review and omission of key studies in the field of social presence and social facilitation. The commentator highlights their own research in this area, using various methodologies, which were not mentioned by Yokomitsu et al. despite their relevance.