Dr. Richard Velleman

How does it show itself?

Yeah, I mean, obviously some of those things can happen.

You know, again, looking at the analogy with smoking and drinking, you know, hey, you're now 16.

I can take you down to the pub in English context.

I mean, drinking ages are different in different countries.

Or, you know, you can now have a cigarette with me because you're now a real man or you've grown up, you're now a real woman, Todd.

So it can be overt like that, but it's much more likely to be covert.

It's much more likely to be children observing their parents often over a long period of time.

And even if when children are children, they say things and lots of them do, I'm never going to be a smoker when I grow up.

I'm never going to be a drinker when I grow up.

I've seen the harm it does and so on.

That's what they're thinking when they're at a certain age.

But amazingly, when they get to a different age, what they find is that all of us lead stressful lives in one way or another.

And they follow the coping mechanisms that they've seen their parents use.

And they see that, you know, if you come in at the end of the day, it's been a hard day at work and you have a drink or you slide out the cigarette or you do a bit of gambling as a way of relieving stress and tension.

Well, you pick up on that as well.

So there are lots of subtle ways that people pick it up.

The other thing I wanted to say, though, is that one of the two big findings is, yes, gambling can run in families.

You can be, quote, infected by having gambling in the family or gambling in your friendship group, and that's going to make you more likely

Obviously, we're talking about probability here.