Clark, Luke, and Zack, Martin. ” Addictive Behaviors (2023): 107626.
Comments: Researchers explain why Gary Wilson was correct when he hypothesized that internet porn’s addictiveness is fueled by endless novelty/variability (not unlike slot machines). Variability amplifies the addictive potential of modern digital products.
Excerpt:
By enabling near limitless diversity and speed of delivery of non-drug rewards, digital technology has permitted engineering of reinforcers with addictive potential that, delivered under natural conditions, would likely never become addictive.
Highlights
- •Variability of reward may ensure ongoing activation of midbrain dopamine neurons.
- •Such variability may confer ‘drug-like’ addictive potential to non-drug rewards.
- •Internet-based gambling, videogames, shopping and pornography fit this profile.
- •Coupled with high frequency delivery, this may promote sensitization and behavioural addiction.
Abstract
Influential learning-based accounts of substance addictions posit the attribution of incentive salience to drug-associated cues, and its escalation by the direct dopaminergic effects of drugs. In translating this account to disordered gambling, we have noted how the intermittent nature of monetary rewards in gambling (i.e. the variable ratio) may allow for analogous learning processes, via effects on dopaminergic signalling. The aim of the present article is to consider how multiple sources of reward variability operate within modern gambling products, and how similar sources of variability, as well as some novel sources of variability, also apply to other digital products implicated in behavioural addictions, including gaming, shopping, social media and online pornography. Online access to these activities facilitates not only unparalleled accessibility but also introduces novel forms of reward variability, as seen in the effects of infinite scrolls and personalized recommendations. We use the term uncertainty to refer to the subjective experience of reward variability. We further highlight two psychological factors that appear to moderate the effects of uncertainty: 1) the timecourse of uncertainty, especially with regard to its resolution, 2) the frequency of exposure, allowing temporal compression. Collectively, the evidence illustrates how qualitative and quantitative variability of reward can confer addictive potential to non-drug reinforcers by exploiting the psychological and neural processes that rely on predictability to guide reward seeking behaviour.
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