Addiction - Social Flashcards
What are the two social explanations of addiction?
Peer Influence
The media
How does ‘peer influence’ explain addiction
As humans are influenced by social groups - Peers can be role models that are imitated, they can establish social norms so that certain behaviours are seen as acceptable – for instance engaging with addiction.
What are the two main elements of peer influence?
Peer Influence
Perceived Social Norms
How does ‘peer influence’ explain addiction?
Theory first outlined by Bandura. Social Learning Theory emphasises the importance of social factors on behaviour. Includes both direct and indirect reinforcement.
There are two key processes for behaviour to be learned:
Observation of role model (someone the observer admires in some way)
Vicarious reinforcement (indirect) Seeing the role model be rewarded in some way for their behaviour, with the individual anticipating a similar response when they engage with the behaviour.
This can be applied to addiction. For instance: an individual may observe their peers smoking and receive vicarious reinforcement through their higher social status and their enjoyment so choose to smoke themselves.
How does ‘Perceived social norms’ explain addiction?
Social norms are behaviours that are considered acceptable within a particular social group. Social norms differ from culture to culture. E.g. Drinking in the UK (normalised) vs a Middle Eastern country (illegal in many)
Some social groups may hold attitudes that encourage behaviour that increases the chances of addiction. Even what we believe is a social norm can influence our behaviour even if it is not really a social norm.
What are the two types of social norms and who came up with them?
Bosari and Carey (2001) made a distinction between two types of social norms.
Descriptive norms: An individual’s perception of how much others engage in behaviours. What an individual believes everybody else is getting up to and using this as the ‘norm’ for their own behaviour.
This causes addiction as people may overestimate how much others are engaging in behaviours such as drinking or smoking. This has been found in relation to alcohol consumption – studies found students believe that peers are drinking more than they are by over 44%.
Injunctive norms: What an individual perceives as others’ approval of the behaviour. What they believe others think they should or shouldn’t be doing.
This causes addiction as people may misperceive their peers’ attitudes towards such behaviours, often believing the behaviour to be deemed acceptable by others. For instance: Students often believe that drinking alcohol is the ‘cool’ thing to do.
What are two strengths of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Strength 1:
Research evidence in the form of Simons-Morton & Farhat (2010) Reviewed 40 prospective studies into the relationship between peers and smoking. Found those with friends who smoke were more likely to smoke themselves in all but one study.
Strength 2:
Can be used as a method of modification If we know that misdirected injunctive norms leads to people developing addictive behaviours, we can design interventions around this, for instance Social Norms Marketing Advertising – This will help challenge addiction change people’s inaccurate perception of social norms by educating them on how often these social norms occur in reality, for instance a poster around a university telling people that students overestimate what others drink by 44%.
What are two weaknesses of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Weakness 1:
Lack of cause and effect, we can’t know if individuals become addicted because of peer influence, or they choose friends because they engage in the same behaviour. In reality, it is likely both are true and interact with each other, this is seen in Ennet and Bauman who conducted a study on smokers who found both that participants who were non-smokers whose friends who did smoke were more likely to become smokers themselves at a follow up, but also found individuals changed friend-groups to those who were more in line with their smoking habits (or lack there of) Suggesting both elements work in conjunction to explain addiction. (weakness of this study is that it only looks at smoking addiction)
Weakness 2:
The majority of studies involving addiction have major methodological issue. For example, most studies involve self-report methods and correlational research which have many issues such as Demand Characteristics aka people lying about their rate of engaging with addictive behaviours. Additionally defining peer groups is very hard as friend groups change over time and people may associate with different people for different activities.
Finally, most of these studies have generalisability issues as the participants are usually adolescents (students) meaning the research cannot be generalised to those older, such as in their 30s and above.
What is meant by the media and how does it explain addiction?
The media refers to any mass form of communication such as TV, movies, newspapers, the internet and radio. Both fiction and non-fiction media can influence both our attitudes and our behaviour.
Many forms of media such as TV glamorise / deglamourize addictive behaviours. Similarly to peer influences, this explanation also uses Social Learning Theory to explain how viewers will inherit behaviours they see in the media.
What are the two key elements of the media’s role in addiction
1) Social Learning Theory
2) Media portrayal of Addiction
How does Social learning theory work?
1) Observation of a role model, somebody the individual aspires to be like.
2) Vicarious reinforcement makes the individual motivated to repeat the behaviour
How does social learning theory apply to media?
According to this explanation throughvicarious reinforcement, an addict will imitate the behaviour of their famous role model because they may see their idol being rewarded for addictive behaviour, e.g. use of drugs leading to higher social status and a good time.
Such portrayals can come from the idol themselves or a character they play.
The addict does not need to be directly reinforced throughoperant conditioning, vicarious reinforcement is enough to form an addiction - especially today where due to social media, people are exposed to their famous role models more than ever and can even engage with them personally on social media
What is the first way the media encourages addictive behaviours?
The first way the media encourages addiction is mass volume
For instance, there is a massive VOLUME of addictive behaviours showcased in the media: alcohol was seen in 86% of popular UK films and 40% of TV programmes.
This has also always been the case, while media has changed tremendously in the past 70 years, addictive behaviours like smoking appearing in them has not changed nearly as much, it was found the amount of smoking has remained consistent from 1950-2002.
What is the second way the media encourages addictive behaviours?
The second way the media encourages addiction is vicarious reinforcement.
The media plays into an individual’s vicarious reinforcement method of learning by presenting addictive behaviours in an extremely positive light.
Gunsekera et al found that in a content analysis, 87 of the top 200 movies of the last 20 years displayed addictive behaviours positively with no negative consequences.
(either one of following studies as support evidence)
We see the effect of this exposure in:
Wellman (2006) which found that media exposure to smoking doubled the chances of them smoking later in life.
Hanewinkel et al (2014) Study on 2000 European teenagers aged 12-14 who had never drunk before – found one year later 40% had tried alcohol and 9% had engaged in binge drinking. - Suggesting exposure to alcohol in films was associated with increased risk of drinking alcohol.
Name two strengths of role of the media in explaining addiction
Strength 1:
Supporting research evidence in form of Penchmann (1999) who used an experimental method of a control and experimental group with two different versions of the same film, just one had smoking and one did not. It was found that those who saw the version that contained smoking reported more positive attitudes towards smoking and intentions of smoking and had increased compared more than the control group.
Strength 2:
It is very reductionist to only consider the effects of nurture (specifically media) when looking at causes of addiction and addictive behaviours, particularly when we have strong research evidence showing a clear link between biological factors in the role of dopamine (nature) and addiction which can be seen in Boileau et al (2003)
