Breaking Bad Habits
Breaking bad habits: classical conditioning and smoking
Smokers find it difficult to quit because the environment is full of signals associated with smoking cigarettes. Sarah Horrigan
Addictions are difficult to break as we usually surround ourselves with people, paraphernalia or situations that trigger the behaviour that led to the addiction in the first place. But psychological conditioning can be used to break bad habits.
Over a century ago, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov made a discovery that still resonates with both psychological experiments and popular culture. Classical conditioning predicts that by repeatedly pairing a motivationally significant stimulus (such as food) with a particular signal (such as a ringing bell) will result in a conditioned response when the signal is encountered (the bell rings in absence of food).
So the sound of a ringing bell will evoke a behavioral or conditioned response, such as salivation (initially elicited by the food stimulus). A previously neutral stimulus can evoke a particular behaviour through an association with an emotionally significant outcome. Pavlov found that after repeatedly pairing the food with the ringing bell his dogs would salivate just to the sound of the bell.
This theory doesn’t just apply to drooling dogs but has formed an important rationale for the development, maintenance and relapse of drug-taking behavior’s. Drugs are rewarding in nature and act by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.
Under normal circumstances, dopamine is involved in maintaining behavior’s essential for survival, such as obtaining food and sex. Drugs also act on this system and the brain associates the rewarding high with the drug, motivating more drug taking. These systems become “hijacked” by the drugs of abuse, producing maladaptive changes that preserve addictive behaviours.
Lighting up and learning
Nicotine, via tobacco, is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the
Smokers find it difficult to quit because the environment is full of signals associated with smoking cigarettes. Sarah Horrigan
Addictions are difficult to break as we usually surround ourselves with people, paraphernalia or situations that trigger the behaviour that led to the addiction in the first place. But psychological conditioning can be used to break bad habits.
Over a century ago, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov made a discovery that still resonates with both psychological experiments and popular culture. Classical conditioning predicts that by repeatedly pairing a motivationally significant stimulus (such as food) with a particular signal (such as a ringing bell) will result in a conditioned response when the signal is encountered (the bell rings in absence of food).
So the sound of a ringing bell will evoke a behavioral or conditioned response, such as salivation (initially elicited by the food stimulus). A previously neutral stimulus can evoke a particular behaviour through an association with an emotionally significant outcome. Pavlov found that after repeatedly pairing the food with the ringing bell his dogs would salivate just to the sound of the bell.
This theory doesn’t just apply to drooling dogs but has formed an important rationale for the development, maintenance and relapse of drug-taking behavior’s. Drugs are rewarding in nature and act by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.
Under normal circumstances, dopamine is involved in maintaining behavior’s essential for survival, such as obtaining food and sex. Drugs also act on this system and the brain associates the rewarding high with the drug, motivating more drug taking. These systems become “hijacked” by the drugs of abuse, producing maladaptive changes that preserve addictive behaviours.
Lighting up and learning
Nicotine, via tobacco, is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the