Psychology 9-1 GCSE - 

3.1.6 - The use of learning theory as an explanation of addiction, including strengths and weaknesses of the explanation - 

According to learning theory, addiction is simply a learned behaviour. In other words people learn to engage in addictive behaviour according to well established principles. There are three fundamental types of learning that apply to humans and animals alike. 1) Learning by paired association (classical conditioning). 2) Learning from the consequences of behavioural choice (operant conditioning). 3) Social learning (observing others). With classical conditioning you form associations between things and environmental cues. For example, if you smoke after work, you will pair smoking with finishing your work, the time or even the place you go to smoke, these cues create powerful cravings. We can unlearn these associations by time or by replacing the activity the cue is associated with. Counter-conditioning is a special type of conditioning where you purposefully create displeasure associations to something with a pleasurable associations to put you off wanting to do it. 

Strengths - 

• Uses well known behavioural conditioning to explain addiction.
• Provides reasoning for why we have triggers for our behaviour.

Weaknesses - 

• Does not explain how to prevent addictions taking form.