Transcript Addictive behaviour and behavioural change

“Protect me from
what I want”:
Addiction and behaviour.
R.Fielding
Objectives
• By the end of this lecture, you
should be able to give
–two accounts of the concept of
“addiction”
–a critique of the concept of
“addiction”
–reasons why the concept of
addiction is important
Why is addiction important?
• Many health hazardous
behaviours are explained by
reference to “addiction” e.g.
smoking, drug use, alcohol.
• The explanation adopted for
health hazardous behaviour
has implications for both
research and approaches to
prevent or modify it.
What is addiction?
• “Addiction” is an explanation
which tries to explain why
people do certain things.
• It relies on a pharmacological
explanation of the actions of a
“drug” on receptors.
• Addiction is interpreted as a
consequence of the “need” of
these receptors for the drug.
• Somehow (this bit is rarely well
explained) this receptor activity
then compels people to
continue to seek and use the
drug.
Problems with “addiction”
• It takes no account of contexts,
and in particular, social
processes in determining
behaviour.
• Fails to address contextual
cueing.
• Classical conditioning reverses
drug “effects”.
• Most people do not become
“addicted”.
• Attribution theory suggests
explanations are not causes.
• While “addiction” is only an
explanation, it is treated as a
cause of complex behaviour.
Social processes in behaviour
• Drug use (smoking included)
almost never begins as a
solitary process independent of
social influence; see
–tobacco advertisments, “peerpressure”, social norms, ritual,
context (role of cigarettes in
social settings/ smoking “joints”).
• Norms are socially derived,
serve to locate people within
groups and control the
interactions between them.
• Social contexts largely drive
group behaviours.
• Studies repeatedly show “peer
pressure” as the major influence
on uptake of drug use.
Contextual cueing
• Many behaviours are cued by
their context. Probably partly
classically conditioned.
–(Read Wieten p.192-199).
• Police use this to jog memory in
crime “reconstructions”
• “Craving” (a key feature of
the addiction hypothesis) has
been shown to be closer in
nature to the memory of the
pleasant experience than to
biological “need”.
Reversal of drug “effects”
• Seigel (1975), Turkkan
(1989) describe wide range
of studies demonstrating the
pharmacological action of
drugs can be reversed using
classical conditioning.
Most users do not become
“addicts”
• With the exception of tobacco
(the most socially normal drug
used) most substance users use
the drugs in a controlled fashion.
This would not be the case if the
drugs themselves were the
“cause” of the behaviour.
Attributional theory
• How people’s explanations affect
their behaviour.
“Addiction” dictates: If I’m taking
drugs I must be addicted.
Attributional theory dictates:
If I’m called an “Addict’ then I
can’t help taking drugs”.
So, people use drugs because:
•
•
•
•
they want to
they like to
they are socially cued to do so (cool)
it is one of the few options for
behaviour open to them in limited
social circumstances
• “addiction” (the explanation) relieves
them of personal responsibility for
continued behaviour.
Summary
• Addiction is a biologically-based
explanation that fails to consider
the psycho-social determinants
of behaviour.
• Research clearly demonstrates
that drug effects are not
absolute and can be altered by
conditioning.
• Social influences on drug taking
encourage this behaviour while
blame is placed on the drug, or
the genes of the user, not the
social attitudes that make it
“cool” to do drugs. These
attitudes are maintained by both
social role models and industry.