Rash Actions
Rash Actions
This chapter considers the link between impulsivity and addiction. It shows that in the absence of protective family and societal factors, children who are impulsive have a higher risk for developing heavy drug use or addiction. Heavy chronic drug use, on the other hand, will make these individuals even more impulsive, in a truly vicious circle. By the time this dynamic has a person firmly in its grip, not even the happiness of a truly beloved child can successfully compete with the immediate attraction of a few drinks. This is not because the person is unable to do the math in theory. It is because when these real-life decisions are made, they are made in real time. And when that processing is carried out, the valuation, decision making, and behavioral inhibition machinery simply does not do the job it is supposed to do. Decades of work in this field have shown that this is not a moral failing but rather a malfunction of sophisticated yet quite sensitive computational hardware.
Keywords: decisions, decision-making, addiction, addicts, impulsivity
Columbia Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
