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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Mental States of Addiction

subject

description

An increasing number of studies have examined lay meanings of addiction. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a generalized conception of an addiction mind-set was evident in the beliefs of a sample of 1,062 Norwegian adults responding to an online survey. The respondents were given a rating task in the following form: “Addiction to [substance/behavior] is/represents [descriptive term].” For each of the nine different addictive behaviors (cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, gambling, smoking, amphetamine, sedatives, snus, and heroin), the respondents rated their endorsement of 11 descriptive terms (mental states): reduced self-determination, obsession, strong urge, strong appetite, strong craving, reduced moral competence, reduced rational decision making, compulsion, habit, conflicting desire, and reduced willpower. Principal components analyses identified two distinct factors for six addictive behaviors: cocaine, cannabis, alcohol, gambling, amphetamine, and heroin. The endorsement levels of the descriptive items of the two factors were consistently high. Sedatives, smoking, and snus did not fit into the two factors. Norwegian adults thus seem to ascribe to a model of an addiction mind-set comprising two distinct versions, the irresistible, involuntary (Craving-compulsion version), and the voluntary resistible dimensions of addiction (Reduced agency version).