Vulnerability to Addiction - Addiction Flashcards
How can gambling be used to help with stress?
Can be used as a coping mechanism (self-medication)
- endorphins produced by gambling can act as stress relief = become reliant on gambling as a way of dealing with stress
- the gambling can produce more stress, become trapped in a spiral
What did Lightest and Hulsey find about gambling and stress?
Among male students impulsiveness and emotion focused coping (changing emotional state e.g. by drinking) in high stress conditions accounted for significant variance in gambling
= turn to gambling to change emotional state
What did Bergevin find about gambling and stress?
Adolescents with gambling related problems reported more negative life events than social/non-gamblers = gambling causes more stress
How can smoking be used to cope with stress?
The small dopamine increase that smoking first releases can reduce stress BUT smoking increase stress during maintenance, self-medication occurs to relive the stress of not smoking
What did Kouvonen find about stress and smoking?
Participants with high effort at work but little rewards were likely to be smokers
- smokers with higher job strain were likely to smoke at a higher intensity
= may turn to smoking as the believe it reduces stress but it just increases it so increase the amount of smoking
How can peers affect smoking and gambling?
There may be a social learning theory effect:
- see peers as role models, end up associating smoking/gambling with our feelings of them e.g. smoking may be seen as cool if someone we look up to smokes
- may want to conform to the group to prevent being an outsider
- may also choose our peer group due to our addiction e.g. turn to a group that smokes which increases the addiction
What did Alexander find about peers and smoking?
The risk of smoking was associated with peer networks in which at least half of the members smoked (informational and normative conformity)
- significant interaction of popularity and school smoking prevalence = associate smoking with popularity - classical conditioning
What did Langhinrichsen-Rohling find about peers and gambling?
Pathological gamblers reported the highest level of peer and parent gambling and susceptibility to peer pressure
How can age affect smoking?
Companies target people in there early teens and 20s:
- get more addicted for longer = will buy more cigarettes than an older person as will live longer
- teens have less pre-frontal cortex so less likely to think of the negatives
- effects of smoking are bigger on teens - more dopamine
What did Aitken and Eadie find about smoking and age?
Children that smoke tended to be more adept at recalling, recognising and identifying cigarette advertisements + tended to pay more attention to cigarette advertising
= cigarette advertising is reinforcing underage smoking
What did Shram find about smoking and age?
Nicotine was found to have a greater activating effect on the brains of adolescents
How can age affect gambling?
Tend to experiment more with gambling when young + different ages tend to take part in different gambling e.g. online gambling
What did Mok and Hraba find about gambling and age?
- Different ages were participating in different gambling
- There was a decline in gambling across age categories = age decline in experimentation with gambling for self-identity, self-presentation and the social acceptance of gambling
How does personality affect addiction?
Eysenck - addictive personality:
- Psychoticism: aggressive, sold, impulsive and egocentric
- Neuroticism: moody, irritable and anxious
- Extraversion: sociability, lively and optimistic
If a person has these personality dimensions then they are more vulnerable to addiction
What did Steel and Blaszczynski find about personality and gambling?
In problem gamblers the higher they scored for impulsivity the worse the gambling
