Artículos en desarrollo
Rethinking Impulsivity and Compulsivity: A Behavioral-Pattern Account of Deficient Control (en colaboración con José Fuentealba, María Estela Andrés Coke y Álvaro Vergés)
Impulsivity and compulsivity are important constructs in several fields of research, both clinical and non-clinical, with a focus on human subjects as well as animal models. However, researchers disagree on how to define them or how they relate to each other, and their different operationalizations show low correlations. In this paper, we propose to characterize both constructs in terms of behavioral patterns. This characterization sets aside two kinds of elements common in current definitions: evaluative elements, such as negative consequences or risk-taking, and subjective elements, such as a feeling of obligation. At the same time, it aims to be consistent with an agential standpoint. The common thread between the two constructs is deficient control. Impulsivity is characterized by rash initiation and premature decision or action. Compulsivity is characterized by repetitiveness and persistence, that is, by inflexible decision or action. Each of these patterns may be produced in multiple ways, so that neither construct need correspond to a single process or mechanism. We argue, however, that this does not justify skepticism or eliminativism about these constructs. By studying their correlations, both with each other and with other measures concerning antecedents and outcomes, we can identify informative patterns. Examples include longitudinal trajectories, as well as the association of impulsivity with hyperdopaminergia and of compulsivity with hypodopaminergia.
Are attributions of responsibility for having an addiction mediated by stigmatizing attitudes? (en colaboración con Gino Marttelo Carmona Díaz y Mafe Rangel).
In a previous set of studies (Burdman, Carmona Díaz & Rangel, under review), we examined laypeople’s views of control and moral responsibility in the context of addiction, with participants from two Latin American countries: Chile and Colombia. We found that laypeople by and large thought of addiction as impairing behavioral control and thought of the impairment of behavioral control as potentially excusing responsibility for moral wrongdoing, but nonetheless tended to think that people with addiction were responsible for addiction-related moral wrongdoing because they were seen as responsible for having an addiction in the fi rst place. Interestingly, we found that laypeople tended to assume that people with addiction were responsible for acquiring their condition when we provided no details about how the condition was acquired, and also thought to a surprising extent that they were responsible for acquiring their condition even when we presented a story meant to depict a clear case of 'non-culpable' addiction acquisition (involving a child who was forced to drink against his will). We then speculated that the tendency to assume people with addiction are responsible for their condition in the absence of suffi cient information, and even when presented with information contradicting that assumption, might refl ect a strong inclination to blame people with addiction regardless of other considerations, possibly as a result of holding prior negative attitudes toward people with addiction. The present set of studies focuses on attributions of responsibility for having an addiction, both diachronic (responsibility for fi rst becoming addicted) and synchronic (responsibility for currently being addicted). The studies focus on two main points: the extent to which laypeople hold stigmatizing attitudes toward people with addiction and the extent to which they believe people with addiction are responsible for their condition by being responsible for fi rst becoming addicted (diachronic responsibility) and/or responsible for currently being addicted (synchronic responsibility). We believe both kinds of attributions of responsibility for addiction might be mediated by stigmatizing attitudes.
Addiction from the 4E perspective (con Juan Manuel González de Piñera y Rodrigo Silva)
In recent years, an emergent literature has approached addiction from within the family of frameworks grouped under the heading of 4E cognition. This body of work addresses two problems that theories of addiction have long struggled with: how to characterize the ambivalent standing of addictive agency between compulsion and choice, and how to steer between the twin tendencies to overemphasize neurobiological or socioenvironmental variables in explaining addictive behavior. In this article, we review and discuss the contributions of 4E approaches to these problems. We focus on four representative pieces of this literature: Ramírez-Vizcaya and Froese (2019), Miller, Kiverstein, and Rietveld (2020), Lavallee and Osler (2024), and Maiese (2024). We close by discussing a further important contribution common to these pieces: their emphasis on the crucial explanatory role of attention. We argue that this emergent attentional theory helps tie together the elements deployed to address the two problems above and points toward avenues for future work.
Constrained choices: addiction, attention, and reasons-responsiveness
A major challenge for theories of addiction is to explain how the condition drives people's behavior through influencing the way they make choices. In this paper, I present a view—the attentional capture model—that addresses this challenge by explaining reduced responsiveness to reasons against using as an outcome of persistent biases in the allocation of internal attention. Building on the extensive empirical literature on attentional biases in addiction, the model centers on two such biases: preferential retrieval and preferential elaboration. The first affects the process of searching for considerations for or against using drugs, with the result that considerations that favor drug use come to mind more easily than other considerations. The second is the tendency to maintain attentional focus on drug-related thoughts once they are actively entertained. Both biases tilt the playing field of practical deliberation: considerations against using may fail to be called up or be only transiently entertained as the agent's attention is disproportionately drawn to considerations favoring drug use. This helps explain why people with addiction may end up making choices that conflict with their considered evaluative perspective.
Not in control, but still responsible? Lay views on control and moral responsibility in the context of addiction (en colaboración con Gino Marttelo Carmona Díaz y Mafe Rangel).
Since people with addiction seem not to satisfy the control condition for moral responsibility, or to do so imperfectly, it has been argued that they should be considered less than fully responsible for moral harms that are secondary to decisions to use drugs. We conducted two experimental studies (Study 1, N=330; Study 2, N=413) recruiting non-expert participants to investigate whether the lay view of moral responsibility in the context of addiction endorses the control excuse. We found that laypeople tend to think of addiction as a condition that impairs behavioral control, but that they do not see people with addiction as less responsible for harmful consequences of their drug use. Interestingly, participants responded differently to an analogous scenario involving OCD. People with OCD were also seen as having limited control, but they were seen as significantly less responsible than people with addiction for harmful consequences of their behavior. Our studies provide evidence that a key difference between OCD and addiction in laypeople’s view is that they tend to see people with addiction as responsible for having the condition. A striking fact about our findings is that participants considered our characters responsible for their addiction even when it would seem reasonable to expect otherwise. We speculate that this may reflect a strong prejudice against people with addiction, consistent with previous research on the stigma of addiction. We conclude by discussing how this might be used by proponents of the normative adequacy of the control excuse by providing an error theory for the lay view.
Is addiction inside the head? The argument from abilities
According to the standard view, addiction is an internal condition: to be addicted is to instantiate a pattern of neuroadaptations in mesolimbic reward pathways that grounds a persistent disposition to use drugs compulsively. Yet there is extensive evidence that craving, drug use, and recovery are modulated by environmental settings, the availability of alternative reinforcers, and socioeconomic conditions. I defend ability externalism about addiction. On this view, to have an addiction is to have a significantly reduced ability to control actions related to drug use, where the relevant ability is specific, local, and situated: it concerns how the agent behaves under a range of relatively specific circumstances. Whether one has this ability depends partly on how one relates to environmental conditions. I address the objection that abilities, like dispositions, are grounded in internal features of the agent, and I conclude by considering implications for the compulsion/choice debate and for our collective responsibility regarding addiction.
Un artículo sobre sesgos implícitos en percepción visual y responsabilidad moral (con Juan R. Loaiza y Francisco Pereira).
Un artículo sobre motivación y emociones para la enciclopedia de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica (con Juan R. Loaiza).