SUBJECT

Title

Theoretical Basis of Addiction Psychology: Emotion Regulation in Chemical and Behavioral Addictions

Code

DPSY16-ADD-101:3

Type of instruction

practice

Level

Doctoral

Part of degree program
Credits

7

Recommended in

Semester 1-4

Typically offered in

Autumn/Spring semester

Course description

Traditional as well as modern theories and empirical results clearly support that characteristics of emotional life, thus negative emotions, emotion regulation difficulties and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, take part in the onset and/or persistence of addictions. The course, accordingly, aims to introduce the current emotion regulation approaches and the related research methods. Emotion regulation definitions, major forms of emotion regulation and characteristics of emotion regulation strategies will be analyzed. Besides the neurobiological background of emotion regulation, those socialization factors will also be discussed, which shape the emotion regulation competencies. For the reason that emotion regulation is directed by different context-specific motivational and social processes, the developmental sequences of emotion regulation processes (and strategies) will be reviewed as well. Another objective of the course is to organize the knowledge concerning emotion regulation in a manner that might inspire and facilitate new directions of research in the fields of psychoactive substance use and behavioral addictions.

Readings
  • Gross, J. J. (2014) (Eds.) Handbook of emotion regulation. New York, Guilford.