For those ATHG subscribers interested in the theory behind the choice
to drink and what.

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Thu, 20 May 1999 21:04:07 -0400
Reply-to:      Kettil Bruun Society <[log in to unmask]>
From:          Stanton Peele <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:       Re: type of alcoholic beverage and CHD abstract
To:            [log in to unmask]

At Kettil Bruun, the Tuesday plenary is a panel on addiction, involving Louise
Nadeau, Ole-Joergen Skog and myself.  Ole will be presenting a similar
"rational" addiction model.  I actually believe that so-called rational models
include vast unexamined adoptions from straightforward physiological addiction
theories -- as in, you take a drug for certain purposes, then become addicted
and all bets are off.  I believe (Robin: avert your glance; radical
construcivism to follow) that values influence every facet of the addiction
process, including interpretations of withdrawal and craving.

SP

Laura Schmidt wrote:

> Many of the issues you've raised are a hot topic right now among
> sociologists and economists debating rational choice.  You should both take
> a look at Richard Herrnstein's book, The Matching Law: Papers in Psychology
> and Economics (Harvard University Press, 1997).  In it, he develops a
> rational choice theory to explain addiction, arguing that humans generally
> focus on immediate rewards, neglecting to take account of how current
> activities affect future payoffs.  I think addiction must be fascinating to
> believers in rational choice because its epitomizes irrational behavior,
> and yet it has this pre-programmed, repetitive, "stereotyped" side as well.
>
> Laura Schmidt
> Alcohol Research Group, Berkeley
>
> At 11:05 PM 5/17/99 +0200, you wrote:
> >Stanton --
> >    Actually, I was always uneasy with the idea that I was supposed to
> teach values to my children -- I tended toward the medieval view of them as
> little adults.  Watching my first wife at work as a primary school teacher,
> I realized how much of what is defined as good teaching at that age is
> really moral training, not very far removed from the McGuffey's Readers a
> "reactionary" state school chief was trying to cram down our throats.
> > >    I'm actually as inured/addicted/committed to rational action as any
> other child of the Enlightenment.  But I also can stand at the side and see
> what is going on, with people like me. As we go to school, we learn to be
> able to give more and more reasons for our activities.  Rationality becomes
> a major part of our claim on society as intellectuals.
> >    But in reality (at least as I experience it), not everything can be
> fitted into the model, no matter how hard we concentrate on believing in
> it.  And the idea of coaching people into rationality, which is basically
> what CBT, motivational interviewing, etc. is about, is powerful within its
> limits, but it has its limits.  Robin
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Stanton Peele <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> >Date: den 17 maj 1999 23:46
> >Subject: Re: type of alcoholic beverage and CHD abstract
> >
> >
> >>You seem to focus so largely on discrepancies with the values --> conduct
> model, I wonder how you approach roles that are thought to rely on
> communicating values to others.  So, Robin, did you teach your children any
> values?  Did you feel you were unsuccessful largely in communicating these
> values, or that your children learned them but did not successfully follow
> or enact them?  Or, alternately, did your children stay out of prison/not
> devote their lives to drugs or crime?  Maybe go to college.  If so, did you
> feel that what you comunicated as a parent played any role in these
> outcomes? Overall, you reveal a fundamental skepticism about people's
> ability to act in accordance with beliefs and values and the "value" of
> knowing
> >>about such things for understanding people's behavior.  I see where this
> would make you sympathetic to models of pharmacological determinism
> (alcohol --> aggression), to various "irrational" defense against violent
> and other crimes, and to clinical concepts like "denial."  Obviously, I
> have a different bias.  But you may know that quite a bit of psychology
> (e.g., social-cognitive learning theory, motivational interviewing) relies
> on the possibility that people who seem to be more deficient than average
> in acting in line with their values or beliefs (as indicated by
> self-destructive behaviors or negative outcomes) can be encouraged to act
> in their own best interests, express their values, act functionally.  Do
> you think people
> >>differ in their degree of irrationality or acting in conflict with their
> values?  That is, some people seem so wholly self-defeating, it is notable.
>  Do they not differ from "normal" in this regard in your view?
> >>
>
> >>Robin Room wrote:
> >>
> >>> Oh, the health beliefs model.  Once or twice we took this seriously,
> while I was in Berkeley, in modeling whether people came to treatment.
> There's a long unpublished analysis by Ron Roizen in the light of this
> model (Ron Roizen, Barriers to alcoholism treatment, Working paper F145,
> Berkeley: Social Research Group, 1977).  As I remember, the model didn't
> work very well in this context.  We (i.e., the literature) tend to assume a
> particular logical connection between people's values, when they may fit
> them together in quite another logic.  Besides, in the hands of public
> health, "health beliefs" tends to be interpreted in terms of rational
> cognition (i.e., there are right beliefs and erroneous beliefs) rather than
> values.
> >>>     (An example concerning the logical conenction between
> beliefs/values: most north Americans say "drinking causes crime".  But most
> also say "people are as responsible for their actions drunk as sober".
> This seems illogical to people around the women's shelters movement, who
> are afraid that saying "drinking causes crime" will mean it functions as an
> excuse.  But most people put the logic together another way: since we all
> have prior knowledge that intoxication causes crime, we are responsible
> because we "chose" to drink or get intoxicated in the first place.)
> > >>>     Even if people do mostly act in accordance with their values, the
> times when they don't could be responsible for much evil/trouble in the
> world.  I would bet that most sex crimes are committed by someone who is
> acting outside the values s/he ordinarily lives by.  "People often act
> outside their values, but more often act in accordance with them" thus
> means that values may not be a good predictor of whether bad events happen.
> >>>     Your Uncle Oscar is an example of the opposite phenomenon: that
> values are also not a good predictor of whether "good" events happen.
> After all, he spent 25 years acting against his values.  Most American
> smokers today agree (or at least verbalize) that smoking is bad for their
> health and that, all in all, they would rather they didn't smoke.
> >>>     Oh, and thanks for the offer, but the world is bad enough off
> without me as a therapist.   Robin
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Stanton Peele <[log in to unmask]>
> >>> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> >>> Date: den 17 maj 1999 22:21
> >>> Subject: Re: type of alcoholic beverage and CHD abstract
> >>>
> >>> >People often act outside their values, and but more often act in
> concordance with them.  Having values antithetical to addiction (towards
> health, sobriety, social
> >>> >responsibility) retards possible addictions (what would it take for
> you to become a drug addict or alcoholic, Robin?), and addicted people are
> in good part
> >>> >differentiated from others by such values (the high percentage of
> addicted convicts is misinterpreted to mean that addiction leads to crime).
> >>> >
> >>> >People have many different values, some more central to others, and
> act more or less consistently with their values (although, on average, more
> consistently than
> >>> >not). Having values antithetical to addiction does not always mean
> that people will avoid addiction.  Among other reasons, they may have
> avoided, for whatever
>
> >>> >reason, confronting the discrepancy between their behavior and their
> opposing values.  BUT, this then becomes one of the great tools for
> removing the addiction.
> >>> >
> >>> >Did I ever tell you about my uncle Oscar?  Ozzie quit smoking in his
> early 40s, after smoking three packs+ of unfiltered Pall Malls every day
> for 25 years. Most
> >>> >would say he was addicted.  He said he was.  One day, when they raised
> the price of cigarettes from 30 to 35 cents, a coworker said, as Ozzie
> placed the requisite
> >>> >coins in a machine, "Look at Ozzie; he's a patsy for the tobacco
> companies.  They could raise the price of a pack to a dollar and he'd still
> pay it."  Oh, I forgot
> >>> >to tell you something about Ozzie.  He was a shop steward at a GE
> television repair installation in Philly.  He HATED GE and the whole damn
> capitalist system.  Every
> >>> >day was a battle between him and the company and, in his mind, the
> larger corporate culture.
> >>> >
> >>> >Okay, back to the bar where my Uncle was eating lunch with his mocking
> co-worker (she reminds me of you, Robin -- you know, you might be a good
> therapist).  Ozzie
> >>> >said to the woman, "You're right; I'm going to quit smoking."  She
> then asked Ozzie if she could have his pack of Pall Malls.  Ozzie said,
> "What, and waste $.35?"
> >>> >He smoked that pack and has never smoked again.  Ozzie is still alive
> and, 35 years later, has never smoked another cigarette.
> > >>> >
> >>> >Why did Ozzie stop smoking that day?  (Ozzie is a good family man, but
> he had a teen age son and a small daughter, and polluting the air in the
> car while riding with
> >>> >them or being a bad role model had never concerned him enough to cause
> him to quit.)  Robin, by the power invested in me as a "Life Process
> Program" therapist (of
> >>> >course, I made the therapy up), I can declare you a therapist if you
> get this answer right.
> >>> >
> >>> >Oh, the health values/beliefs model (this is from my social
> psychologist days) explains differences in behavior in the face of health
> messages (e.g., anti-smoking
> >>> >ones) in terms of several intervening factors, including a belief that
> the proposed behavior or behavioral change will result in a particular
> outcome (e.g., better
> >>> >health) and the value the individual attaches to this outcome.
> >>> >
> >>> >SP
> >>> >
> >>> >Robin Room wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> No -- tell me about it.
> >>> >>     By your lights, was Ira Glasser behaving rationally in his
> conversation with you?  What do you see as the relation between values and
> rationality?
> >>> >>    Robin
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Stanton wrote, in part:
> >>> >> >Are you familiar with the health values model (was that
> Wolestin/sp?) which predicts behavior in terms of the values the individual
> places on different choices?
> >>> >> >
> >>> >>
> >
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