Integrating dual-process decision making and social dynamics: A formal modeling framework for addiction

Currently, formal models of addiction focus either on the complex individual decision-making processes involved in addiction or on the social dynamics of addiction. They do not integrate these two levels, which has been identified as a key shortcoming of current formal models of addiction. To address this, we propose a nonlinear dynamical modeling framework of addiction integrating both the individual level and social level of addictive behavior. The individual level of our modeling framework is a formalization of a dual-process theory, where one type of process increases the consumption of addictive goods, and another type of process limits consumption. For our formalization, we build on a well-studied model from ecology, originally used to model periodic outbreaks of the spruce budworm population. To this model, we add the process of incentive sensitization at the individual level and at the social level, we incorporate the critical processes of selection homophily and peer influence. We show that our integrated modeling framework can be used to explain key phenomena identified in addiction literature: a gradual transition to heavy use, sudden relapse and sudden quitting, relatively stable use states over time (i.e., abstinence moderate use, and heavy use), social contagion and sudden outbreaks, clustering of users, and social aid in recovery. In addition, we demonstrate how our modeling framework can be extended to include mutualistic, competitive, and more complex interactions between different addictive behaviors. Finally, we show how our framework can lead to new insights and predictions and suggest avenues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).