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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

melioration, behavior addiction process, suboptimal behavior, ABA design

College

David O. McKay School of Education

Department

Counseling Psychology and Special Education

Abstract

This project was undertaken to evaluate how melioration explain behavior addiction more robustly than more conventional models such as maximization. Suboptimal behavior, including addiction, can be conceptualized as the consequence of a decision strategy called melioration that is utilized in choice situations in which the value of an alternative is affected by the rate of its availability (Hernstein & Vaughan 1980; Lowenstein & Elster, 1992). The higher the rate of availability of an alternative, the lower the overall value. Melioration can result in negative consequences that are not recognized by the individual until their cumulative negative effect becomes unavoidable (Bickel & Marsch, 2000; Elster and Skog, 1999; Rachlin, 2000). This negative effect may go unrecognized because individual decisions in the series of repeated choices are not perceived as adding much weight to the overall consequences. This failure to perceive the overall outcome has been referred to as the “primrose path to addiction” (Rachlin, 2000, p.74).

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