Explanations for Nicotine Addiction Flashcards
What’s Brain Neurochemistry?
An internal (biological) explanation for nicotine addiction.
Relates to chemicals inside the brain that regulate psychological functioning.
What Does Brain Neurochemistry State?
States nicotine addiction’s formed due to repeated activation of brain’s reward pathway
What happens inside the brain when an individual smokes a cigarette (including the dopamine reward pathway)
1) Smoking Occurs: Nicotine’s inhaled and reaches blood stream, activating nicotine receptors and brain’s reward pathway in less than 10 seconds.
2) Nicotine indirectly stimulates the ventral tegmental area down the mesolimbic pathway, where a large number of dopamine receptors are concentrated.
3) Dopamine activity’s increased and released into the nucleus accumbens, this leads to euphoria, increased alertness and decreased anxiety.
4) The activity in the limbic system releases dopamine, activating the pre-frontal cortex which is responsible for decision making, makes decision to keep performing smoking behaviour to gain reward.
AO3: Brain Neurochemistry as Explanation for Nicotine Addiction: Research to Support
P: McEvoy.
E: Studied smoking behaviour in people with Sz who were taking drug. Drug’s a dopamine antagonist, blocks dopamine receptors lowering level of dopamine activity in the brain.
E: Found people taking the drug showed a significant increase in smoking.
L: Supports role of dopamine, as patients sought nicotine in order to increase dopamine levels in brain and increase euphoria.
AO3: Brain Neurochemistry as Explanation for Nicotine Addiction: Criticism of Research
P: Sample bias, only uses ppts with Sz.
E: May not be neurotypical.
E: Difficult to generalise findings on low dopamine activity and smoking behaviour to target population of smokers without Sz.
L: Limits how far research can be used to support role of dopamine in smoking.
AO3: Brain Neurochemistry as Explanation for Nicotine Addiction: Criticism: Biological Reductionism
P: Criticised for biological reductionism.
E: Theory reduces complex human behaviour of nicotine addiction down to dopamine levels within the brain.
E: Neglects a holistic approach, takes into account a person’s cultural and social context would influence someone’s nicotine addiction, e.g. nicotine addiction developed due to wanting to fit in with peers., rather than euphoria
L: Explanation lacks validity, doesn’t allow us to understand behaviour in context.
How can smoking behaviour be learnt through operant conditioning?
Smoking behaviour could be explained by positive reinforcement where an individual’s rewarded with the feeling of euphoria when they inhale nicotine due to it’s impact on the dopamine system in the brains reward pathway, person will smoke again to get the same reward of euphoria.
How can smoking behaviour be maintained through operant conditioning?
Negative reinforcement explains why individual would continue smoking.
Stopping smoking leads to appearance of withdrawal syndrome which has unpleasant symptoms e.g. agitation.
The symptoms make it difficult for a smoker to abstain for long therefore an individual would continue smoking to avoid unpleasant symptoms (negative reinforcement).
What’s Cue Reactivity? (explaining role of primary and secondary reinforcers)
The pleasurable effect of smoking’s known as primary reinforcer because of rewarding effect on dopamine reward system (this isn’t learnt).
Other stimuli repeatedly present at same time as nicotine e.g. certain places, become associated with pleasurable feeling and become secondary reinforcer, because they become rewarding too.
Secondary reinforcers e.g. certain place, acts as a cue, as their presence produces similar psychological and physiological reaction to nicotine itself.
Reactions make a person want to smoke again, which can explain why individuals may relapse/ maintain nicotine addiction.
AO3: Smoking Behaviour as Applied to the Learning Theory: Research to Support
P: Levin et al.
E: Gave two rats water bottles, licking one released nicotine, licking the other had no effect.
E: Found rats licked nicotine water bottle significantly more often, number of licks increased over many sessions.
L: Supports, shows rats were positively reinforced to take chemical, maybe due to withdrawal they were experiencing.
AO3: Smoking Behaviour as Applied to the Learning Theory: Criticism
P: Environmental determinism.
E: States individual’s controlled by reinforcements and associations that cause behaviour.
E: e.g. if a person’s rewarded for smoking by feeling of euphoria, they’ll inevitably smoke again to get the same reward, neglecting the role of free will/ choice.
L: Learning theory may not be suitable explanation,
AO3: Smoking Behaviour as Applied to the Learning Theory: Strength
P: Has practical applications.
E: Principles of theory that addiction’s caused by pleasant associations has led to behavioural interventions e.g. aversion therapy.
E: Effectively treats nicotine addiction as it encourages patient to re-associate nicotine with negative feelings e.g. nausea, rather than feeling of pleasure.
L: Important part of applied psych, helps treat people in the real world.
