Investigating mental representations of psychoactive substance use and other potentially addictive behaviors using a...

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Behavioral addictions are complex, with varying mental representations.
• Understanding these representations is key to refining diagnostic criteria.
• Previous research has not fully explored the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of diverse addictive behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and compare mental representations of substance use and other addictive behaviors.
• To identify similarities and differences in cognitive evaluations across different addiction types.
• To contribute to a better understanding of behavioral addiction representations and diagnostic criteria.

Main Methods:

• Utilized free-word associations from 661 participants describing their most disturbing excessive activity.
• Applied network-based clustering to analyze mental and emotional representations.
• Compared representation distributions across substance use and problem behaviors.

Main Results:

• Identified four distinct mental representations: Guilt/Shame/Relief, Addiction/Health, Procrastination/Boredom, and Stress/Relaxation.
• Addiction/Health representations were more common for substance use.
• Procrastination/Boredom representations were more frequent for other addictive behaviors, increasing with self-reported intensity.

Conclusions:

• Supports the existence of non-substance-related addictions.
• Suggests perceived time wasted is a more accurate indicator of addiction tolerance than actual time spent.
• Highlights meaningful differences in cognitive evaluation processes between substance and behavioral addictions.