Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction

"This book is a valuable source for both researchers and practitioners who are either familiar or unfamiliar with implicit cognition and addiction" ―Emmanuel Kuntsche, ALCALA

Most research on cognitive processes and drug abuse has focused on theories and methods of explicit cognition, asking people directly to introspect about the causes of their behavior. However, it may be questioned to what extent such methods reflect fundamental aspects of human cognition and motivation. In response to this issue, basic cognition researchers have started to assess implicit cognitions, defined as "introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate feeling, thought, or action." Such approaches are less sensitive to self-justification and social desirability and offer other advantages over traditional approaches underscored by explicit cognition.  

Wiers′ Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction lays the groundwork for new approaches to the study and addictive behaviors as the first handbook to apply principles of implicit cognition to the field of addiction. This Handbook features the work of an interdisciplinary group of internationally renowned contributing North American and European authors who have brought together developments in basic research on implicit cognition with recent developments in addiction research.  

Key Features:

• Moves the field forward by integrating cutting-edge research from formerly independent disciplines that help provide a better understanding of the etiology, prevention, and treatment of addictive behaviors
• Lays the groundwork for new approaches to the study and treatment of addictive behaviors as the first handbook to apply principles of implicit cognition to the field of addiction
• Presents existing applications to the prevention and treatment of addictive behaviors as well as possibilities for future interventions based on new approaches based on implicit cognition
• Opens with a chapter, written by the volume editors, that outlines general theoretical issues and provides a roadmap to the book
• Provides integrative summaries – written by both "insiders" and "outsiders" to the field - in a final section, highlighting theoretical issues currently being debated within this newly emerging area of scholarship

This Handbook is a unique, invaluable addition to libraries as well as to the collections of academics, students, and professionals interested in how cognitive research can contribute to the understanding, prevention, and treatment of addictions.

 

Reinout Wiers is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, where he leads the Addiction Development and Psychopathology (ADAPT) Lab. He is (co)director of the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Urban Mental Health. He is internationally known for his work on assessing and changing implicit cognitive processes in addiction. He has published over 400 international papers and many book-chapters and three books. With Alan Stacy, he edited the handbook of implicit cognition and addiction (SAGE, 2005). He received the prestigious VIDI (2002) and VICI (2008) research grants from the Dutch National Science Foundation (N.W.O.) for research on implicit cognition and addiction, and has been part of several European and international research consortia. 

Alan W. Stacy is Director of the University of Southern California (USC) Transdisciplinary Drug Abuse Prevention Research Center, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  He is also Associate Professor at the USC Department of Preventive Medicine.  He received his Ph.D. in social and personality psychology in 1986 from the University of California, Riverside.  He did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and at USC.  Dr. Stacy has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles on addiction, focusing on cognitive models of drug use.  He was one of the first investigators to apply implicit cognition approaches to the addiciton area.  His research on implicit cognition was recently acknowledged in the Tenth Special Report to Congress on Alcohol and Health.