A theory of natural addiction

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: Smith, Trenton G.; Tasnadi, Attila
• 署名单位: Washington State University; Corvinus University Budapest
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2006.08.006
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 316-344
• 关键词: endogenous opioids; sugar addiction; behavioral ecology; neuroendocrinology

摘要

Economic theories of rational addiction aim to describe consumer behavior in the presence of habit-forming goods. We provide a biological foundation for this body of work by formally specifying conditions under which it is optimal to form a habit. We demonstrate the empirical validity of our thesis with an indepth review and synthesis of the biomedical literature concerning the action of opiates in the mammalian brain and their effects on behavior. Our results lend credence to many of the unconventional behavioral assumptions employed by theories of rational addiction, including adjacent complementarity and the importance of cues, attention, and self-control in determining the behavior of addicts. We offer evidence for the special case of the opiates that harmful addiction is the manifestation of a mismatch between behavioral algorithms encoded in the human genome and the expanded menu of choices faced by consumers in the modem world. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.