But psychological conditioning can be used to break bad habits. Over a century ago, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov made a discovery that still resonates with both psychological experiments and popular culture. Classical conditioning predicts that by repeatedly pairing a motivationally significant stimulus such as food with a particular signal such as a ringing bell will result in a conditioned response when the signal is encountered the bell rings in absence of food.
So the sound of a ringing bell will evoke a behavioural or conditioned response, such as salivation initially elicited by the food stimulus.
A previously neutral stimulus can evoke a particular behaviour through an association with an emotionally significant outcome. Pavlov found that after repeatedly pairing the food with the ringing bell his dogs would salivate just to the sound of the bell. Drugs are rewarding in nature and act by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. Under normal circumstances, dopamine is involved in maintaining behaviours essential for survival, such as obtaining food and sex.
Drugs also act on this system and the brain associates the rewarding high with the drug, motivating more drug taking. Nicotine, via tobacco, is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the word. Skinner BF, The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. New York: Appleton-Century; Murthy P and Subodh B.
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San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers; Factors affecting cigarette smoking based on health-belief model structures in pre-university students in Isfahan, Iran. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, ; Psychosocial correlates of cigarette smoking among college students in China. As the effects of nicotine wears off, symptoms such as increased anxiety, irritability or low mood may be experienced. The person is then likely to smoke a cigarette to remove these symptoms negative reinforcement and as a result they are likely to repeat this behaviour in the future.
Relapse: Cue reactivity is a learning explanation that can be used to explain relapse. This is because the person associates specific moods, situations or environmental factors smoking-related cues with the rewarding effects of nicotine, and these cues can trigger a relapse. Assessment mats provide a structured approach for students to revise key topic areas - an ideal revision tool as well as homework or lesson activity.
They can come from outside seeing a person smoking, an ashtray, a special place, or an activity or from the inside feelings of fear, frustration, disability, anger, etc. Addictions generally occur in three areas simultaneously: within the body of the person who is smoking, in the relationship that the person has with the substance itself, and finally, the relationship it maintains with the environment or the context.
That is why understanding the relationship the individual maintains with the addictive substance is of utmost importance for any treatment.
Therefore, one of the keys to effective treatment is to be able to recognize, accept, understand, and face these triggers. What happens at the brain level?
The brain circuits involved in this cue-habit formation are deeply related to our mental reward system. Throughout history, humans have used substances that influence and interfere with our reward-based learning system.
In fact, every drug, from tobacco to cocaine, influences the same brain pathways: the mesolimbic pathway that acts mainly through the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Want to create new and healthier habits? If you are a smoker and want to understand and break this classical and operant conditioning cycle, try the MindCotine Kit and start re-writing your history.
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