Addictive Behaviour - Psychology

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  • Created by: Maya98
  • Created on: 30-05-17 12:43
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  • Addictive Behaviour
    • biological explanation
      • Dopamine
        • addictive behaviours and substances release dopamine in the brain. This leads to a sense of pleasure.
        • reward pathway made to help us. We feel pleasure in response to behaviours such as eaching
          • with addiction these pathways can be damaging as we instead gain pleasure from behavior that is damaging e.g. taking drugs.
        • Addictive substances release dopamine in the reward pathway (part of mesolimbic pathway)
        • Over time dopamine receptors become less sensitive
          • Therefore the individual would need more of the substance to experience the same effects.
          • and if they stop, they would experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms
          • So addiction becomes more about avoiding the withdrawal symptoms than experiencing the highs.
        • Dopamine explains the appeal of addiction
          • Volkow et al found that dopamine initiates the addiction, but the changes this has on the pre frontal cortex causes the behavior to become addictive
            • pre frontal cortex - responsible for decision making and memory
            • found that cocaine addicts have abnormalities in their pre frontal cortex and show impaired performances in tasks involving this area of the brain
        • Dopamine system is making the individual want it rather than like it.
        • Evaluation
          • Not all addictive behaviour causes an increase in dopamine
            • e.g. Stokes et al found no significant increase in dopamine in cannabis users
          • Dopamine has a range of other roles
            • Liberzon et al found increased dopamine in PTSD veterans when they were reminded about the war.
              • therefore shows that dopamine helps us avoid something unpleasant just as much as it motivates us to seek pleasant stimuli
          • Small smaple sizes for this type of research.
          • Ecological validity as research conducted in a lab, might not be that same drugs that participants would get off the street.
          • Useful in terms of treatment
            • If Dopamine is blamed then other drugs that increase dopamine should stop the individual from taking damaging drugs
      • Genetics
        • people closely related share behaviour
        • Goldman et al found that addictions were highly inheritable
        • Dopamine receptor gene - A1 variant in may individuals with addiction.
          • Comings et al - 48.7% of smokers had the variant, only 25.9% of general population.
        • ADH gene - how alcohol is metabolized in the body. Some variants decrease the risk of alcoholism by causing unpleasant reactions to alcohol. Other variants linked to increased risk, alcohol is broken down much slower
        • Kaufman - found that serotonin caused increase risk in alcoholism, but not on its own. Often was paired with maltreatment in childhood (diathesis-stress)
        • Evaluation
          • concordance rates for cocaine initiation in MZ twins was 54% and for DZ 42%
            • But the dependence rates for cocaine show a difference between MZ (35%) and DZ (0%) suggesting genetic factors.
          • Complex as many genes have been identified to affect addiction.
            • Cannot say that there is a gene for addiction.
            • Different addictive behaviour may be triggered by different genes.
          • determinism - individual sees behaviour as an unstoppable consequence of genetics and less likely to take responsibility
          • doesn't consider the social factors that may affect the addiction.
    • Individual Differences
      • Personality
        • Eysenck's theory
          • Extraversion - sociable,lively and optimistic
          • Neuroticism - have high levels of anxiety and can be moody and irritable
            • Sinha et al - highlighted the role stress has on initiation of addiction.
            • Individuals also have low self esteem
              • Baumeister suggests that low self esteem may lead people to act in a manner that is self defeating.
              • Using addiction as a way of avoiding their negative feelings about themselves.
          • Psychoticism -impulsive, impatient, aggressive and creative
            • addicts feel as though smoking wont affect them now, so no harm in indulging.
            • Impulsive cause and effect of addiction
            • Also issue when individual is attempting the stop the addictive behavior.
              • Stevens et al - impulsive individuals less successful in treatment programs
          • Studied 200 drug addicts  found high P and N scores but low E and L scores
        • Evaluation
          • Mainly correlation study - cause and effect difficult to distinguish
          • McNamara - in rats impulsive meant that they were more likely to self- administer cocaine but not heroin
            • therefore the role of personality depends on the type of addictive behavior
          • traits are not unique to addiction, also found high P and N scores in criminal behaviour
          • Kerr et al - states that there are so many traits associated with addiction that would be typical of most individuals to some degree
          • However, there is a clear link to biology, as the personality refers to dopamine
            • Buckholtz - those with higher impulsivity showed a greater dopamine release in response to the drug.
      • Cognitive
        • Kahneman - proposed that humans have particular way of approaching decision making and making judgement on probabilities
          • Known as Heuristics - mental short cuts used in problem solving + decision making
        • Representativeness heuristic
          • belief that random events have a pattern
          • becomes a problem with gamblers fallacy - belief that if something happens more frequently than normal it will happen less frequently in the future.
            • e.g. roulette wheel showed a run of black for 26 times in a row, gamblers would believe that a red was 'due'
        • Availability heuristic
          • principle than an event is seen as more likely if it is easier to recall from memory
          • decisions often made based on how of how often you hear about something
          • issue in gambling as we hear more about the big lottery winners than about the thousands of people who lose.
            • Additionally, slot machines make a lot of noise and flashing lights when someone wins, but do nothing when there is a loss
        • Evaluation
          • Griffiths et al - compared verbalisations of gamblers with non gamblers. found that gamblers produced many more irrational verbalisations
          • Joukhador - gambling belief questionnaire. problem gamblers scored high
          • only provides description of thought process not explanation for it
          • problems with researcher bias as participants have to report how they think to researcher
          • same cognitive biases in people who do not become addicted to gambling
          • useful in treatment as cognitive biases can be treated e.g. CBT
    • SOCIAL
      • peer influences
        • Bandura - social learning theory
          • emphasizes role social factors have on behavior
          • individual might observe peer smoking, those peers might be people they look up to, peers are being rewarded by having a higher social status therefore the individual recreates the behaviour.
        • perceived social norms
          • rules of behaviour that are acceptable within a social group
          • descriptive norms - perception of how much others engage in behaviours such as drinking and smoking
          • injunctive norms - what an individual perceives as other's approval of behaviour
          • suggested that students overestimate the descriptive and injunctive norms within a peer group
            • they believe that their peers are drinking more alcohol than they are (descriptive norms) and also that it is more socially acceptable (injunctive norms)
        • evaluation
          • Simon-Morton - positive correlation between peers and smoking in all but one studies.
          • hard to tell whether it is peer influence in which the individual is influenced by the behaviour around them, or peer selection, where the individual seeks out others that participate in similar behaviour
            • Bauman - non-smokers who had smoking friends were more likely to smoke at follow up
            • also evidence that individuals changed groups depending on smoking/non-smoking behaivour
          • Neighbors et al - descriptive and injunctive norms were best predictor of alcoholism in US students
          • need to consider family and neighbors
      • Role of Media
        • social learning theory
          • celebrity or film star acts as role model
            • often drugs and alcohol are glamoured in films, acting as vicarious reinforcement to viewers
              • behaviours presented in a positive lights
            • alcohol was seen in 40% of tv programmes and 86% of popular UK films
        • Hanewinkle - studied teenagers from range of European cultures who reported that they had not drunk alcohol and did not want to
          • at follow up 12-months later 40% of sample had tried alcohol and 9% had engaged in binge drinking
        • Evaluation
          • correlational research - cause and effect cannot be established
          • Shih - experimental method. used two films one with smoking and one without
            • those that had viewed the smoking film had reported more positive attitudes towards smoking than other group
          • much of the research conducted on adolescents - research into adults is rare
          • unfair on adolescents. Akinson et al - stated that many of the adolescents knew that addiction in films was glamorized
          • many adolescents stated that films did not affect them and that it was peers that influenced them more
          • media can also have positive affects - some films show negative effects of addiction which acts as vicarious punishment

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