Addiction - Individual

Question 1

What are the two individual explanations of addiction?

Answer 1

Cognitive biases and Addictive Personality

Question 2

What does the cognitive biases explanation of addiction say causes an addiction?

Answer 2

This explanation suggests that addiction is the result of irrational thinking as addiction is illogical, the costs of addiction will always outweigh the benefits. - this explanation says these irrational thoughts are caused by cognitive biases

Question 3

What are cognitive biases?

Answer 3

Cognitive biases are our natural tendency to make information match either what we want to believe or what we already believe.

E.g. Humans have a fundamental need to think of themselves as good people. Therefore, we pay more attention to information that suggests we are a good person, and we pay less attention to information that suggests we aren’t. Everybody has cognitive biases, not just addicts

Question 4

What causes a cognitive bias?

Answer 4

Cognitive Biases are caused by heuristics, heuristics are mental shortcuts that help us to make quick decisions but they can often lead to errors in thinking. These errors may be able to explain why some people gamble addictively even though it is illogical.

Question 5

What are the two types of heuristics that relate to gambling?

Answer 5

representativeness and availability.

Both these heuristics involve thinking we can predict unpredictable events.

Question 6

What is the ‘Representativeness Heuristic’

Answer 6

Representativeness Heuristic: thinking an outcome is ‘due’ based on previous events.

E.G if we flip heads 3 times in a row, we might think a tails is ‘due’ even though the odds haven’t changed from 50/50.
This is the gambler’s fallacy - Gamblers may feel that after a run of losing bets they are “due” a win, and so may persist in gambling behaviour.

Question 7

What is the ‘Availability Heuristic’ and how is this exploited in day to day life?

Answer 7

Availability Heuristic:

This is where events are more easily recalled from memory can bias our judgement – pleasant memories of us winning £20 on the lottery are more pleasant than the 50 cards we bought that won us nothing. This also applies to other people as well, as we constantly hear about other people winning but never the millions of people who never win.

The casinos exploit this by placing machines close to each other so each individual can hear others winning - making them believe they are likely to win too!

Additionally, when the jackpot on a betting machine is won, there is usually a lot of noise e.g. the satisfying sound of the coins being dispensed. However, when the gambler loses, the machine is silent.

Question 8

What is the KEY STUDY that relates to cognitive biases?

Answer 8

Key Study: Griffiths (1994)
found support for cognitive biases when investigating the thinking processes of gamblers. Participants were informed to verbalise the thoughts they were having whilst gambling. It was found that 14% of the regular gamblers’ verbalisations were irrational, compared to just 2.5% of the non-regular gamblers.

Question 9

What are the four types of cognitive biases?

Answer 9

Illusion of control:Many gamblers will falsely believe that ifthey can control some aspects of the process then their chancesof success will be improved. Forexample,they believe theymight win if they choose a particular seat at a roulette table.​

Hindsight bias:A gambler will claim that they are not surprisedby the outcome of a gamble and could have predicted what theoutcome would be. This helps them to maintain the belief thatonce their skills haveimproved,they will be able to win moreconsistently.​

Self-serving bias:This is the tendency of gamblers to attributeany wins to internal causes such as their own skill, and anylosses to external factors such as bad luck. This helps them tofeel it is not their fault if they lose and they should thereforecontinue to gamble.

Attentional bias: when an addict is paying attention to certain stimuli and ignoring other things in the environment. The bias increases the motivation to take part in the behaviour in the first place. Then the addict pays more attention to stimuli relating to the addiction which helps explain maintenance and even relapse. This can be seen in a STROOP TEST.

Question 10

What study supports the existence of a Attentional bias

Answer 10

Key Study: McCusker & Gettings (1997)

45 participants: gamblers, spouses of gamblers and a control group. Conducted modified Stroop test using gambling-related words, drug-related words and neutral words.

Found gamblers spent significantly longer naming the colours of gambling-related words compared to spouses and control group.

Question 11

What are two strengths of the Cognitive Bias explanation of Addiction

Answer 11

Strength 1:
Supporting evidence for cognitive biases in the form of Griffiths as there was a huge difference in the difference of irrational thoughts in gamblers.

Strength 2:
Strength – approach can be used to modify behaviour in the form of cognitive restructuring. Griffths suggested we play the irrational thoughts back to the patients which would likely make them view gambling differently.

Question 12

What are two weaknesses of the Cognitive Bias explanation of Addiction

Answer 12

Weakness 1:
Lack of cause and effect, The approach is good at describing why people choose to gamble but does not explain where these thoughts come from and why some people have them and others don’t.
This means the theory could be considered descriptive rather than explanatory, we cannot make any predictions about people’s behaviour from this theory.

Weakness 2:
Limited usefulness / as this explanation only applies to a gambling addiction - gambling is different from other types of addiction where the risks are easier to understand such as alcohol as the risk of gambling is based on maths and probability. This lack of understanding causes the addicts to use heuristics for their decision making rather than logic.

Question 13

What does the personality explanation of addiction say causes addiction?

Answer 13

Approach assumes that some people have personalities that predispose them to developing addictions (addictive personality) This means that if someone with this personality is able to rid themselves of one addiction, they may simply fill that void with a new addiction.

Question 14

How does Eysenk support the idea of an addictive personality?

Answer 14

Eysenck proposed that some people are more vulnerable to addiction due to their personality.
He argued that people seek out addiction as a way of meeting a need that is driven by their personality.

Eysenck (1997) argued that addiction is more prevalent in people who score high in psychoticism and neuroticism.

Question 15

What key study supported Eysenck?

Answer 15

Key study: Gossop & Eysenck (1980

Researched 200 drug addicts – compared results of addicts to a control group on the EPQ.

Found addicts had higher psychoticism and neuroticism but lower extraversion. (more introverted)

Question 16

How does ‘psychoticism’ link to addiction?

Answer 16

One characteristic of high levels of psychoticism is impulsivity. This is the tendency to act on a whim, with little forethought and little or no consideration of the consequences of your actions.

It would be reasonable to argue that high levels of impulsivity may lead people to engage in behaviours or take substances that have negative consequences. (explains initiation and relapse)

Question 17

How does ‘Neuroticism’ link to addiction?

Answer 17

People high in neuroticism tend to be anxious, moody and prone to depression.
Eysenck argued that people high in neuroticism would be more prone to addiction as a way of coping with the effects of their neuroticism.

Question 18

Name 3 strengths of Personality explanation of addiction

Answer 18

Strength 1:
Research evidence to support the existence of addictive personality’s in Gossop and Eysenck which also used a large sample size and a control group adding to the credibility of the existence.
CA in that it could be argued the EPQ is reductionist and oversimplifies the entirety of human behaviour into just 3 categories.

Strength 2:
Less reductionist than other approaches as considers both nature and nurture this is because evidence suggests personality and biology work in combination to develop an addiction.

Buckholtz et al (2010) found that those who were found to have higher levels of impulsivity released more dopamine on the consumption of a drug than those with normal levels of impulsivity.

Strength 3:
Approach has real world application to method of modification as by acknowledging the role of personality, it allows for us to put in interventions to prevent addiction, for instance if we know neuroticism leads to addiction as a way of coping with anxiety / depression, counselling, other methods of therapy and drugs can be used on the individuals to help them better cope with it without the use of engaging with addiction such as anti-anxiety drugs.

Similarly cognitive skills training could be given to deal with the impulsivity of addicts due to their high psychoticism.

Question 19

Name 2 weaknesses of Personality explanation of addiction

Answer 19

Weakness 1
here is a difficulty establishing cause and effect, this is because the relationship between personality and addiction is correlational meaning the personality tests are done once the addiction has already been developed meaning we don’t know if the addiction caused a change in personality, or the personality caused the addiction!

Weakness 2
Kerr (1996) suggests that an addictive personality is simply a myth – he says this is because there are so many traits listed as being part of an ‘addictive personality’ that it would be typical of most individuals and traits like Psy and Neu aren’t even unique to addiction – for instance criminals were also found to have higher Psy and Neu levels on the EPQ than the average person.