by Nick Roy In his article, Stromberg argues that young adults who take up smoking might not be in total control of their actions. He argues that this might be true even when the young adult is not a habitual smoker and is generally believed to be in control of themselves by American society. Instead of viewing addiction as the product of a wrong, but freely made, choice, Stromberg theorizes that mechanisms which evolved in humans to facilitate social coordination and activity create the sense of lapse in agency which, he argues, is at the core of why people start becoming habitual users of tobacco and possibly other drugs. By viewing addiction neither as the exclusive domain of clinical psychology nor as the result purely of free choice, Stromberg uses evolutionary models and anthropological theory to explain the large population of habitual smokers on college campuses.
Stromberg begins his argument by discussing the delicate nature of the word “agency.” The word has been used in various contexts throughout history. Stromberg settles on using the phrase “sense of agency” which is defined as the feeling of being in control of one’s own actions and one is ultimately responsible for one’s own actions. The presence of other humans, each with their own sense of agency, creates the need to be able to anticipate the plans and actions of others in order to navigate the complex social lives of humans. One way the human brain handles this complexity, according to Stromberg, is the phenomenon of joint attention where a person can simultaneously attend to someone and the object that someone is attending to. Stromberg then argues that the increased capacity for group projects in humans led to more flexible social structures that necessitated a subjective sense of a lapse of agency in order to control the more complex social structures. Stromberg continues his argument by discussing the American sense of agency. He argues that the idea that people are not entirely in control of their actions poses a threat to American assumptions of individual responsibility and achievement. As a result, lapses in agency are often regulated to the realm of politics and psychopathology by Americans. However, even with the presence of a strong, autonomous sense of self in America, there does exist lapses in agency in American culture that can either be described as positive (being lost in a good book) or negative (drug addiction and other severe pathologies). These lapses are often the source of confusion in American society as to what causes them. Stromberg’s core argument rests on the data he and his team collected on young adult cigarette smokers in college. He argues that some of the activities his sample reported performing when they first started to smoke were similar to the ritualistic activities Durkheim reported in his The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Stromberg argues that the excitement caused by large and energetic social gatherings combined with imitating other smokers and the emotional arousal generated by the whole context constitute what Durkheim called a “collective effervescence” whereby the act of smoking is associated with the excitement and positive feelings of the surrounding social context in a manner similar to religious rituals. According to this model, the act of smoking becomes associated with the feelings of the wider social context. According to Stromberg, these thoughts and feelings are powerful enough to overpower a smoker’s sense of agency creating a situation where they feel that they are unable to control their actions. Stromberg describes this collective effervescence in three parts. First, many of the young adult smokers he had interviewed reported that they started smoking habitually at parties which were characterized by high-energy interactions between friends. Second, interviewees reported a sense that when someone started smoking they felt they needed to as well. Third, large and energetic social gatherings, like parties, tend to arouse states of emotion that do not usually arise in an individual and are often interpreted as coming from beyond one’s body. These factors can act to weaken an individual’s sense of agency and may lead to lapses in agency. Stromberg’s argument may seem controversial, especially in America, for the same reasons he described in his article. As a society that is in many ways built on the ideas of personal responsibility and achievement, the idea that many of the actions people take may not be freely chosen is confusing at best and disturbing at worst. Stromberg argues that the social context young smokers find themselves in can lead to them being “swept up” into the social activities and lose their sense of agency amid the excitement and emotion of the gathering. Furthermore, in a manner described by Durkheim, smokers come to associate the act of smoking to the increased arousal that surrounded their smoking. While I would have liked to see more recent data and there is an issue in generalizing the findings of a study which used a sample of college students broadly to describe all Americans, I found the study interesting and in need of further elaboration. Specifically, I am interested if similar effects exist for other drugs such as alcohol. I find the discussion of contextual reasons why people may start becoming habitual smokers far more enticing than the ongoing deterministic/free-will philosophical debates that often frame theories of addiction. I think that this look at the psychological processes which underlie much of our social interactions is a promising avenue for future research in addiction and dependency.
15 Comments
Edward Quinn
4/5/2016 12:15:31 pm
I found the discussion on page 321 particularly interesting. Stromberg briefly discusses the attribution of feelings to objects associated with an experience. Durkheim found that the excitement generated in religious rituals among Australians was attributed to sacred objects, and Stromberg suggests that something similar might be happening with early smoking experiences, which often occur in emotionally arousing social settings. This idea made me question my own attributions for enjoyable, effervescent experiences in my past (e.g., a great wedding reception). How much of my enjoyment do I attribute to simply being with family and friends, and how much of it do I attribute to the formal attire, wedding cake, great food and drinks, etc.? I think the successful marketing of drugs (including alcohol) can be explained with reference to this idea pioneered by Durkheim. It is also helps explain why, in modern Australia, every pack of cigarettes has a grotesque image of organs ruined by smoking.
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Edward Quinn (2nd Response)
4/28/2016 07:14:51 pm
In light of today's class discussion, it would have been interesting to see how gender plays into lapses of agency. In my own experience, it seems as if it is more acceptable for men to lose control or experience a lapse in agency than it is for women to do the same thing. I am thinking of the particular example of binge drinking, which is a behavior that is interpreted in gendered ways. For men, binge drinking can sometimes be an expression of masculinity. For women, binge drinking is not an expression of femininity and may in fact damage their reputation. I have come across the gendered interpretation of binge drinking from time to time, and I think it speaks to the need to use critical perspectives in neuroanthropological analyses of behavior.
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Issac
4/5/2016 04:14:12 pm
I had a coach in high school that use to always tell me, " the birds of a feather flock together". I think he was trying to tell me that context i place myself in matters. He was worried that if I surround myself with people who smoke and drink, I too will end up smoking and drinking with them. This chapter seems to support what my coach used to tell me and, based on my experience , I strongly agree with this logic.
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Issac 2nd post
5/4/2016 01:20:46 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation about this article in class. It was interesting to see the way it developed into talks about pretend play and classmates personal experiences with starting to smoke and growing up seeing their parents or cousins smoking. In the southern culture that I grew up in that is so quick to judge, over generalize ( perhaps as I am doing right now), and place blame , this article and the conversation we had in regards to it seems quite necessary. Whether we are talking about cigarettes, pot, or alcohol, the conversation about addiction needs to evolve and consider more complex factors such as the ones this article presented us with.
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Jake Aronoff
4/6/2016 09:36:46 am
As I was reading this chapter, I kept thinking of the work of the sociologist Nicholas Christakis, and I was actually surprised he was not referenced at some point in the chapter. Christakis focuses on social networks and the relevance of networks on a variety of health and behavioral outcomes, from obesity to divorce. He has a very interesting TED talk in which he discusses his work, and he makes explicit reference to what he calls "emotional contagion", which appears to be very relevant to this article, as it examines how the emotions of one person impacts the emotions of others around them, as in the case for college smokers highlighted in this chapter.
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Jake Aronoff (2nd Post)
4/29/2016 03:17:27 pm
One aspect of our class discussion that I found particularly interesting was pretend play. It made me think of role playing or improv, in which the goal (as I understand it) is to be another person. Thus, if a college student starts role playing as a smoker, their sense of agency could be subsumed into this new role they are playing and therefore feel a lapse in their own agency in the face of the agency of the character or role they are playing.
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McCallie L. Smith III (Trip)
4/6/2016 09:45:28 am
This study conducted by Stromberg and colleges is very interesting and can be very confusing and can appear contradictory a first glance. This study is another great example of what nuroanthropology is, a the importance of multidisciplinary ways of thinking and approaching study. Stromberg pulls heavily from Durkheim whose methods and theories are used in Anthropological discourse, but he himself was and is known primarily as a sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher.
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McCallieL. Smith III (Trip) 2nd
5/4/2016 09:02:39 am
When reviewing this study, and it is still remarkably fascinating. It is so in the fact that it shows, in relation to smoking, that one individual thinks they are acting on their own agency but really they are experiencing a lapse in agency.
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Olivia Davis
4/6/2016 10:08:11 am
We've all heard or heard of that one friend saying, "I could quit smoking/drinking/using right now if I had to, I just don't I want to." This chapter, I believe, does a great job of discussing the concept of agency and how we, as individuals and as members of a grander social fabric, use the concept in our everyday lives. By introducing it to the reader as not just agency, but as the "sense of agency," it allows more room to discuss the fact that we may or may not have full control over our own faculties at any given point in time and supports the idea that our bodies are immersed into the cultures in which we reside whether we like it or not. Personally, I'm under the impression that it's a little bit of both. There are times when our individual understanding and executive functions can come into play and motivate or prevent us from any one or more actions, but there are also times (whether as classically conditioned responses or supernatural influences) where we don't have full say in what our bodies do or do not do.
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Olivia Davis
5/5/2016 09:20:42 am
I am still grappling with this concept of the "sense" of agency as opposed to agency itself because the more that I read and study in regards to it, the more I find a battle of mental control from the observer and in myself. Something that comes to mind when I think about this sort of idea that seems so difficult to wrap one's mind around is an "auto-pilot" phenomenon, where an individual in a high stress situation "switches" on their auto pilot mode and carries on everyday functions (shaped by culture and environment, presumably) and doesn't require an active stream of conscious to do so. The best real world example of this would be driving to a place that you've been many times and not remembering how you got there because you "zoned" out. This kind of situation is obviously a result of the body being able to take information that was at some point conscious ("I'm driving home") and then carrying out the action without another conscious effort or thought (the act of driving home).
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Kelly Likos
4/6/2016 10:39:34 am
I found this chapter interesting. I was particularly interested the link that was illustrated between lapses in agency and acquiring addiction. Stromberg’s theory of smoking to increase arousal would be an interesting one to apply to the public idea of addiction.
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Kelly Likos
4/26/2016 09:13:24 pm
In review, I would be interest in knowing the correlation between agency and the processes of rational thought. In a situation like this one, it seems that a person's agency is pushed aside at the same time that rational thought fails. While I remember enjoying this reading, I wish we could have a follow up to the information supplied here. How do these theories work in other settings? What happens with a wider population?
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Jessica Muzzo
4/6/2016 03:22:14 pm
Considering the current discussion of lapses in sense of agency, I wonder what role the knowledge of cigarette addiction plays in perpetuating addiction to cigarettes. For instance, perhaps the reiteration and acceptance of our 'helplessness against addiction' actually prevents people from fighting the urge to smoke. Labeling chemicals as 'addictive' has given people a socially acceptable fall-back for explaining moments of compromised self-control.
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Jessica muzzo 2nd post
5/3/2016 10:02:35 pm
Thinking about this more deeply has got me thinking about the population involved in this study. College students, I would assume, are probably the most susceptible group of American adults to the effects of collective effervecence on smoking behavior since they are frequently in social situations and peer pressure is still a very real influence on choices. With this in mind, it is interesting to note the decreasing numbers of smokers on college campuses. Perhaps health campaigns on and off campus are exerting a positive influence on society.
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10/20/2021 02:19:07 am
I found this article very interesting, thanks for sharing
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AuthorThis blog is group authored by Dr. DeCaro and the students in his ANT 474/574: Neuroanthropology. Archives
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