A-Level Psychology: Addiction

Addiction is one of the option topics in A-level Psychology, and it rewards students who can apply biological, learning and cognitive explanations to real behaviour and then judge how well treatments work. This material follows the revised content of current specifications (for example AQA's A-level Psychology for first teaching from September 2025, where the theory of planned behaviour has been removed and stress, family and peers are now grouped under social influences).

The quiz opens with the vocabulary of addiction: tolerance, withdrawal syndrome and psychological dependence, identified in a short case. It then covers the three risk factors named in the specification, genetic vulnerability, personality and social influences.

Nicotine addiction is explained twice over: through brain neurochemistry, with nicotine triggering dopamine release in the mesolimbic reward pathway, and through learning theory, including negative reinforcement from escaping withdrawal and cue reactivity in a former smoker who craves a cigarette with her coffee. Gambling addiction is explained through variable ratio reinforcement and through cognitive biases such as the gambler's fallacy and the illusion of control, with Griffiths' thinking-aloud study of fruit-machine players as evidence.

The final questions deal with reducing addiction and changing behaviour: aversion therapy and its basis in classical conditioning, accurate and inaccurate claims about drug therapy, covert sensitisation and cognitive behaviour therapy, and Prochaska's six-stage model, both as an ordered sequence and applied to a person preparing to stop gambling.

The material offers four formats. The 12-question quiz gives an explanation after every answer. The 17 flashcards cover every key term and study. The printable written work sets eight open questions, including an evaluation of methods of reducing addiction and an application of Prochaska's model, with ruled space for handwritten answers that are then checked. In the oral exam an examiner asks one question at a time, asks you to apply explanations to short cases and gives precise feedback at the end.

It is designed for students taking Addiction as their third option who want to practise explaining, applying and evaluating each part of the topic.

• Describe physical and psychological dependence, tolerance and withdrawal syndrome
• Explain genetic vulnerability, personality and social influences as risk factors for addiction
• Explain nicotine addiction through brain neurochemistry and learning theory, including cue reactivity
• Explain gambling addiction through learning theory and cognitive biases
• Evaluate drug therapy, aversion therapy, covert sensitisation and CBT
• Apply Prochaska's six-stage model of behaviour change to addictive behaviour

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the Addiction option in A-level Psychology specifications (for example AQA A-level Psychology 7182, specification for first teaching from September 2025, section 4.3.10).