Nicotine addiction: Learning theory and cue reactivity Flashcards
Who do smokers learn their behaviour from?
Higher status role models. Smokers may vicariously witness higher status role models being praised and rewarded for their behaviour which leads to vicarious reinforcement. This is the tendency to repeat smoking behaviour which they see others being rewarded for.
How does social learning theory cognition lead to smoking?
They pay attention to the smoker, they retain the information about how to smoke, they then have the ability to reproduce the smoking behaviour themselves and are motivated to smoke ( ie others that are our role models do this and you want to be like them)
What is immediate reinforcement and LT consequences?
According to Skinner, immediate reinforcers take precedence over the LT consequences of addictive behaviours. The fact that 25% of inhaled nicotine reaches the brain in less than 10 seconds validates this argument.
It is generally accepted that drawing links between behaviours and the long term consequences of smoking ( which are negative) tends to be neglected, especially when there are euphoric short term effects of drug taking.
What are immediate effects of smoking?
Happiness, euphoria relaxation
What are long term consequences of smoking?
Lung cancer, health problems, respiratory issues
What is the role of peer acceptance?
Milton et al (2008) found that young smokers identified peer influence as an important factor in smoking, and the rejection from a peer group as key. Hence, this implies that through social modelling and interaction, peer acceptance acts like reinforcement that helps maintain smoking behaviour.
Smoking maintenance through negative reinforcement?
As the effects of tobacco start to wear off with repeated exposure users can experience unpleasant WITHDRAWAL symptoms (e.g. nausea, insomnia, cravings).
Taking more nicotine stops these negative experiences occurring. As this further use removes the negative states and provides more pleasure, this is likely to INCREASE the frequency of smoking and subsequent addiction.
What is cue reactivity?
The theory that people associate places and situations with the rewarding effects of nicotine which can trigger cravings. Nicotine is the unconditioned stimulus and the pleasure caused by the sudden increase in dopamine levels is the unconditioned response. The brain then tries to lower dopamine back to a normal level. The neutral stimuli become conditioned stimuli with repeated pairings, which then produces the conditioned response. However if the brain has not received nicotine, the levels of dopamine drop and the individual produces withdrawal symptoms.
LEARNING APPROACH TO SMOKING ADDICTION - Research support?
Harakeh et al (2007) found non-smoking adolescents with older siblings that smoked and those with a smoking best friend were more likely to have started smoking 1 year later. However, older adolescents were not affected by smoking of their younger siblings.
LEARNING APPROACH TO SMOKING ADDICTION - Individual differences?
For example, research by Robinson & Berridge (1993) argued that many people try drug taking yet do not become addicted despite the rewarding experiences on offer. This suggests other factors must also be at work in addiction other than the environmental reinforcements.
LEARNING APPROACH TO SMOKING ADDICTION - Environmentally deterministic?
The approach suggests that if your environment and role models are addicted to smoking it’s inevitable that you will face the same fate. This does not consider the role of personal ‘autonomy’ and suggests we are ‘mere puppets of circumstance’ and therefore we do not have free will in the outcome of addiction to nicotine.
LEARNING APPROACH TO SMOKING ADDICTION - Scientific?
Due to smoking behaviour being studied at the stimulus-response level of learning, this can be objectively observed and recorded to demonstrate that nicotine addiction does originate from S-R conditioning.
LEARNING APPROACH TO SMOKING ADDICTION - Practical applications?
Research by Calvert (2009) showed cigarette packets to smokers, who showed strong reactions in their ventral striatum (VA) , but it also suggests cue reactivity as people reacting to visual stimuli.
This type of research suggested that simply seeing cigarette packets (e.g. behind a shop counter) could trigger off addictive desires, hence laws were passed in 2012 in the UK to make cigarettes more hidden behind closed counters to prevent this occurring.
