addiction individual differences Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is the Hero explanation?
Cognitie biases
What’s the Sidekick explanation?
Personality
What the the cognitive biases explanation suggest?
Looks at habitual ways of thinking and interpreting that might lead to addictive behaviour and how our thought patterns may explain why not everyone becomes addicted.
What is meant by heuristic’s and who came up with the idea?
Kahneman and Tversky proposed that humans have a particular way of making decisions. They are mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems or make decisions
How can we relate heuristics to a gambling addiction?
We use two heuristics specifically in the situation of gambling, Representativeness and Availability
What is representativeness, and an example within gambling?
Belief that random events have a pattern, for example gamblers fallacy, they may believe that they are due or owed a win after getting the same result so many times so will continue gambling
What is availability and an example within gambling?
The idea that if something is easier to recall form memory then its more likely to happen, for example in gambling this will lead people to continue gambling if they hear reports of people winning or if they hear the sound of coins rolling out as people win
What is a strength of the cognitive biases explanation?
Supportive evidence by Griffiths who compared the verbalisations of 30 gamblers with 30 non regular gamblers while playing on the fruit machine and found that regular gamblers were far more likely to use irrational verbalisations. This shows a clear difference in the cognitive processes in addicted gamblers and non addicted gamblers.
What’s a weakness of the cognitive biases explanation?
Lacks applicability and predictability about real life addictive behaviours. For example the first time that there was a triple rollover in the uk lottery and the media reported that1 13 had come up fewer times than any other number meaning that people applying representativeness would pick the number 13 and those applying availability wouldn’t pick it.
What’s another weakness of the cognitive biases explanation?
Illogical thought patterns have been found in non gamblers and those who are not addicted to gambling. Baboushkin suggested the this is because these patterns can be applied to everyday situations but not chance events like gambling.
what does the personality explanation suggest?
Eyesenck says that addiction develops based on two different personality types, Pychotisism and Neuroticism
What is psychotisism characterised by?
Characterised by lack of empathy, impulsiveness
What is neuroticism characterised by?
Anxiousness, Depression and irritability
How could pychotisism relate to addiction?
They act impulsively and may not think the addiction affects them in a bad way now. Dalley et al found that high impulsivity rats showed increase cocaine intake compared to low impulsivity rats.
How could neuroticism relate to addiction?
People with anxiety or depression may self medicate with smoking, alcohol and drugs. Baumeister suggests that low self esteem may led to individuals may use an addiction to avoid the negative feelings.
What’s a weakness of the personality explanation?
Difficulty establishing cause and effect, it is not certain whether low self esteem causes addiction or whether the addiction causes low self esteem or an addiction is making people stressed and impulsive not the other way round.
What’s a strength of the personality explanation?
There is some support evidence, Dong et al found that those who scored high in neuroticism and psychotisism on the Eyesenk personality test we more likely to have problem internet usage.
