Bio Explanation 2- Addiction Genes Evaluation Flashcards
What are the key strengths of biological explanations? ( issue 1- determinism)
They explain why only some people are more likely to go onto become addicted even though many people try behaviours such as gambling.
Biological explanations also reduce the amount of blame placed on the addicts themselves by taking a deterministic view and suggesting that the addict could not have controlled their addiction.
What is an issue with it being deterministic?
Lewis
Taking a biological view is unhelpful to addicts because labelling addiction as a disease can damage their self-esteem and make them feel helpless in overcoming their addiction.
Issue 2- Role of social and cultural factors
Kendler et al
Studied Swedish twin pairs and found that the role of genetic factors changed over time. For men the 48 years that the twins were studied, however the heritability rate increased over the 48 years. Changing social attitudes towards women as smoker may have influenced the likelihood that women smoked.
Supporting evidence- Kendler and Prescott 1998
About 2000 twins were interviewed from female-female pairs, including both members of monozygotic and dizogotic pairs. They were interviewed over the phone about cannabis use over their lifetime.
Concordance rates for cocaine initiation:
MZ 54%
DZ 42%
Genetic factor have a moderate impact on probability of ever using cannabis, and a strong impact in heavy use and dependence. Family also has a small impact.
- only generalise to twins
Contradictory evidence - rat park
Compared the drug intake of rats housed in solitary confinement 24h a day with rats housed in “Rat Park”. Rat park had lots of rats, toys and food.
Social females had barely any morphine solutions neither did social males.
Caged females and males consumed a lot more drugs.
This is contradictory because is suggests that drug use is due to the environment we grow up in.
- used animals so cannot be generalised to humans.
