The Book Choice, Behavior Economics, and Addiction Challenges Society's Views

The psychology based book Choice, Behavioral Economics, and Addiction consist of multiple studies performed and tested on people who frequently abuse substances. The book applies a purely technical, math based strategy to answer the hypothesis posed by the different experimenters. Many graphs and tables of data are spread throughout this book, to further illustrate the finding on substance abusers. This technical approach helps make the studies objective but has the negative potential to not consider other emotional reasons for substance abuse.

The experiment "Rational Addiction and Injection of Heroin" performed by Becker & Murphy in 1988, was the first experimental study I reviewed. The two scientists conducted the experiment to disprove the accepted psychological theories of hyperbolic discount and relative addiction. These theories propose that Heroin abusers are irrational when consuming and purchasing the drug. The theories suggest that price of addictive drugs such as heroin was inelastic, and that consumer's addiction allowed them little control over their spending on controlled substances. Becker and Murphy used an economic method to obtain their results.