Monday, March 16, 2009

Are You As Smart As A Substance Abuse Professional? - Motivations

Question: Whenever John goes a few hours without smoking a cigarette, he gets nervous and irritable. John's desire to smoke illustrates what theory of motivation?

A: Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

B: Cognitive dissonance

C: ethological consistency

D: drive reduction.

For the correct answer, click on comments and while you're there leave a comment of your own.

This is article #25 in a series on Are You As Smart As A Substance Abuse Professional?

1 comment:

David G. Markham said...

The correct answer is D - drive reduction

Hull's drive reduction theory says that we are motivated to maintain homeostasis. The tissue deprivation (lack of nicotine in John's case) leads to a drive to maintain the homeostasis (nicotine levels in the blood) which motivates the desire to get nicotine into the system to prevent nicotine withdrawal symptoms. There is no better nicotine delivery system than a burning burning tobacco which is directly inhaled into the lungs and then assimilated into the blood stream. Of course, nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, inhalers do the same thing but less efficiently. As we all know the carcinogens in the tobacco will kill a person.