Gordon R. Foxall - Addiction as consumer choice: exploring the cognitive dimension

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1 Addiction as Consumer Choice

Exploring the cognitive dimension

Gordon R. Foxall

The frontispiece, Bronzinos An Allegory with Venus and Cupid , is reproduced by kind permission of The National Gallery, London.

is reproduced from E.K. Miller and J.D. Wallis (2009) Executive function and higher-order cognition: Definition and neural substrates. In L.R. Squire (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience , Vol. 4 (pp. 99104), by kind permission of Academic Press.

is reproduced from K.E. Stanovich (2011) Rationality and the Reflective Mind , by kind permission of Oxford University Press, USA.

is reproduced from P.J. Corr (2008) Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST): Introduction. In P.J. Corr (Ed.) The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality (pp. 142), by kind permission of Cambridge University Press.

In , I have drawn on and revised extensively portions of my Accounting for consumer choice: Inter-temporal decision-making in behavioral perspective, Marketing Theory , 10, 315345.

In , in drawing on material from G.R. Foxall and V. Sigurdsson (2012), When loss rewards: The near-miss effect in slot machine gambling, Analysis of Gambling Behavior , 6, 522, I have added to and substantially rewritten it, and propose an alternative interpretation to that of the original. I am grateful to my co-author.

Chapter 6 draws on revised versions of material published in my Cognitive requirements of competing neuro-behavioral decision systems: Some implications of temporal horizon for managerial behavior in organizations, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , Vol. 8, Article 184, 117.

The material on reward prediction errors in is based on material in my The marketing firm and consumer choice: Implications of bilateral contingency for levels of analysis in organizational neuroscience, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , Vol. 8, Article 472, 114.

I should like to thank Sally Osborne, my secretary at Cardiff University, and Sinead Waldron and Jacqueline Curthoys at Routledge, for their help and encouragement as I have worked on this book. I am also profoundly grateful to Dr. Mirella Yani-de-Soriano, and Professors Paul Hackett and Jorge Oliveira-Castro for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts.

It is, as ever, an especial delight to thank my wife Jean for her invaluable comments on earlier drafts, and the opportunities we have had to discuss the subject matter.

Having thanked so many people, I must claim one supreme accolade for myself: the remaining errors are mine alone.

Bronzinos painting that forms the frontispiece to this book, and which is sometimes known as Venus and Cupid, Folly and Time , is not in my view defeatist. For, although the immediate is tempting, it is not inevitable. While it reflects stimulusresponse reactions to the imperatives of environmental opportunities and threats, inculcated in the course of a long phylogenetic history, the lure of the immediate can be overridden, not only by the learning that occurs during the ontogenetic development of the individual, but also through the contemplation of alternative futures. The painting captures the moment of choice, the unconsummated instant whose outcome is uncertain, at least to the nave observer. It is this moment with which we are here concerned: the point of decision in which either passion or restraint will prevail, when one course of action, together with its aftermath, will be determined. In inquiring further of this moment, we shall not solve the problem of free will versus determinism, but, by understanding better the cognitive dimension of addiction, we may at least clarify the nature of choice.