Economic literature: papers , articles , software , chapters , books. FRED data. My bibliography Save this article. Registered: Gary S. The authors develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time. Strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption. Such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable.
They are an important part of the authors' analysis be-cause even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention. Their theory also impies that "cold turkey" is used to end strong addictions, that addicts often go on binges, that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods, and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction.
Copyright by University of Chicago Press. That being said, an example of a mechanism that seems to fit well with the dual-process analysis of compulsivity is that proposed by Berridge and Robinson in their influential work on incentive-sensitization.
Continuous failures to override type-1 processes that are dependent on an entrenched motivational mechanism like incentive-sensitization arise since these processes are difficult to override by intentional effort due to their cue-dependency, computational speed and frequency, and because addicts simply put insufficient effort into overriding them perhaps due to decision-fatigue, misjudgment, or some other reason.
A dual-process analysis of the notion of compulsivity does not, therefore, rule out the intentionality of addictive behavior. However, nor does it rule out the possibility that some other psychological or neurological mechanism or combination of mechanisms than incentive-sensitization might in the end turn out to provide the best empirical explanation of the compulsive behavior of human addicts or at least be part of such an explanation. The bone of contention over which the respective proponents of the medical and the moral model of addiction do battle seems to rely in large part on the assumed contradiction between these two answers.
The normative implications are obviously deep and far-reaching. If addiction rules out voluntary behavior and choice, then addicts can only at best be indirectly responsible for their drug use. That widens the scope for public policy interventions. If, by contrast, addiction involves voluntary, chosen behavior, this scope for intervention will be correspondingly constrained. Our aim in this article has been to argue that a middle path is not only possible but actually quite plausible in the light of the evidence: behavior can be voluntary, chosen, and compulsive at the same time.
One way of making conceptual sense of this is to assume that our decision-making system is divisible. There are many good reasons, in our opinion, to believe that addictions essentially depend on such divisions in the decision-making system of addicts. However, this view does not mean that it is literally impossible for addicts to refrain from drugs. It only means it is much harder for them than it is for people who are not addicted. Even heavily addicted individuals have the capacity to abstain, although they may need help to learn how to exercise that capacity properly.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
We would like to extend our thanks to the Research Council of Norway for providing financial support for the writing of this paper. For present purposes, we assume that a person has free will with respect to a particular action at some time if she has the ability to refrain from that action at that time. We do not mean to suggest that compulsive behavior in this sense is a symptom of all compulsive disorders, nor that there is one specific mechanism that explains all observed varieties of compulsive behavior.
Their work can be seen as an attempt to examine how rational agents would deal with addictions when the addiction itself is a disturbance of the choice process. Often compulsive behavior becomes over-learned and automatized as a result of repetition and may require virtually no active efforts at all Having said that, our general approach does not depend, we believe, on any specific view of the motivational economy involved.
While we cannot address all the issues raised by this claim at this juncture [but see 43 for a discussion], for present purposes, we assume that in at least standard cases, the self is associated with type-2 processing.
See Henden It is consistent, therefore, with the possibility of differences between forms of compulsive behavior in terms of how difficult they are to resist, e. For more on the conceptual connection between effort expenditure and compulsivity, see Henden Most of the data supporting it come from laboratory animal studies with little consideration of the social context in which the drugs were administered.
This has caused some to criticize the theory for failing to generalize to human addicts [for a recent discussion, see 62 ]. There is also evidence suggesting that incentive-sensitization by itself is not sufficient to create repetitive drug-oriented behavior in animals if they are given more options [see 63 ].
For replies to some of these criticisms, see Robinson and Berridge 64 ; Robinson et al. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Front Psychiatry v. Front Psychiatry. Published online Aug 7. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Reviewed by: Serge H. Olavs Plass, Oslo, Norway e-mail: on. Received Apr 12; Accepted Jul The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Normative thinking about addiction has traditionally been divided between, on the one hand, a medical model which sees addiction as a disease characterized by compulsive and relapsing drug use over which the addict has little or no control and, on the other, a moral model which sees addiction as a choice characterized by voluntary behavior under the control of the addict.
Keywords: addiction, compulsion, irresistible desires, choice, rationality. Introduction The view of addiction as a neurobiological disease characterized by compulsive and relapsing drug use has come under renewed attack by several philosophers and psychologists 1 — , 7.
The Theory of Rational Addiction Viewing addiction merely as a specific pattern of rational choices obviates the need for a theory of addiction. Addiction and Compulsive Behavior Compulsion, somewhat paradoxically, seems to involve deliberate, goal-directed behavior caused by something that is external to the person and independent of practical deliberation. Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments We would like to extend our thanks to the Research Council of Norway for providing financial support for the writing of this paper. References 1. Benn P.
Disease, addiction and the freedom to resist. Philos Pap 3 — Foddy B, Savulescu J. Addiction and autonomy: can addicted people consent to the prescription of their drug of choice? Bioethics 20 1 :1— A liberal account of addiction. Philos Psychiatr Psychol 17 1 :1— Heyman GM.
Addiction, a Disorder of Choice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Levy N. Addiction, autonomy and ego-depletion: a response to Bennett Foddy and Julian Savulescu. Bioethics 20 1 — Pickard H. The purpose in chronic addiction. AJOB Neurosci 3 2 — Schaler JA.
Addiction is a Choice. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company; Charland LC. Am J Bioeth 2 2 — Hyman SE. The neurobiology of addiction: implications for voluntary control of behaviour. Am J Bioeth 7 1 :8— Leshner AI. Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters.
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Philos Sci 71 — Acceptance of unsupported claims about reality: a blind spot in economics. J Econ Methodol 18 — Fehr E, Zych PK. Do addicts behave rationally? Becker and Murphy define rational behavior as being utility maximizing, having stable preferences and trying to anticipate future consequences when making choices.
In the rational addiction model, which builds on a model introduced by Stigler and Becker in and further developed by Iannaccone in and , [7] individuals weigh present and future utility of consuming an addictive substance. Consumers then maximize the total discounted value of utility over their life span subject to a budget constraint.
Tolerance : The higher consumption levels have been in the past the smaller utility individuals gets from consumption in the present:. Reinforcement : The higher consumption levels have been in the past the higher consumption is in the present.
Reinforcement is closely related to the concept of adjacent complementary which means that present and future consumption of addictive goods are complements. In the model, adjacent complementary reflects the potential addictiveness of a good towards an individual. Becker and Murphy show that potentially addictive goods, respectively adjacent complementary, can lead to unstable steady states in the model.
These unstable steady states lead to a bimodal distribution which is observed for many addictive goods. Figure 1: Optimal consumption path of an addictive good for a rational consumer with a high time preference [14].
The model also explains how a rational consumer can find himself in a high-consumption steady state with a lower utility than at a low-consumption state. The model implies that individuals with a high time preference get potentially more addicted than future-oriented individuals. Under normal circumstances a rational consumer would not end up at the inferior steady state.
Becker and Murphy show that a sudden distress, e. One of the most criticized assumptions of the model is the one of perfect foresight.
The assumption of time-consistent preferences has also been frequent subject to criticism because of strong psychological evidence that humans are time-inconsistent in their behavior. The closest the model gets to addiction is when consumers have reached an inferior steady state of high consumption and their own utility calculation does not allow them to quit. However, they knew that from the beginning and they can always decide to quit.
Another common point of criticism is the implementation of exponential discounting since empirical evidence suggests that hyperbolic discounting explains addictive behavior more realistically. In disciplines other than economics, the model may be seen no less controversial.
Social and political scientist Jon Elster, for example, notes that there are different degrees of addictive behavior, from a harmless habit on the one side of the scale to e.
And, he finds it impossible to believe that in the latter case the addict calculated all the consequences with perfect foresight and came to the conclusion that the addiction is his best outcome. He states that the assumptions of the rational addiction theory conflict with accepted knowledge about addictive behaviors and has not performed well in predicting these behaviors.
The theoretical implications of the rational addiction model have been empirically tested by numerous studies over the years. More specifically, the researchers have assessed whether higher prices in the future lead to lower consumption today, as predicted by the model. Furthermore, he found consistent evidence for the Becker-Murphy Model in the estimation of separate demand equations for subsamples based on education or age. Keeler, T. Hu, P.
Barnett, W. Manning: Taxation, regulation, and addiction: a demand function for cigarettes based on time-series evidence Keeler et al. Since their analysis is based on monthly time-series data, the study can only narrowly test the rational addiction hypothesis which is primarily explaining long-term responses.
Nevertheless, they find some evidence supporting the model of rational addiction as they are able to model current cigarette consumption as a function of past and future consumption.
Becker, M. Grossman and K. Murphy: An empirical analysis of cigarette addiction In this study Becker and Murphy, together with Grossman, use aggregate annual per capita sales data for cigarettes in U. Based on the statistical significance of future prices as a determinant of current prices, they can reject myopic models of addictive behavior and find overall support for the rational addiction theory. However, the estimated discount factor is not consistent with the rational addiction theory.
The authors conclude though that the data did not offer enough information for accurate estimates of discount rates. Conniffe tests the rational addiction model with data of tobacco consumption, employing time series data annually conducted in Ireland in the period from to Using a similar approach to Becker, Grossmann and Murphy , the estimates for lagged and future consumption are clearly insignificant.
Olekalns and P. Bardsley: Rational addiction to caffeine: An analysis of coffee consumption
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