The whys and the hows of psychosocial approaches to addiction

© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, IncThe field of addiction psychology attempts to addresses a major social problem. Yet, discourse within the discipline suggests a biological focus, driven by disease-model of addiction, has caused our understanding to be too narrow. In contrast, psychosocial approaches conceptualize the phenomena from various perspectives. We here bring together papers utilizing a variety of methods in the context of substance use and mis-use. These explore the effects that alcohol primes have on attentional control, how procrastination may predict hazardous drinking, the typology of “pre-drinking” motivations and the effects of dyadic membership. It also looks at prevention in terms of public health messaging and also heroin use uptake. We hope showcasing these studies will encourage addiction researchers to widen the scope and method of their enquiries.