Nonconformist tendencies related to risky choices in female methamphetamine abstainers

ABSTRACT

Background: Many experimental studies and theoretical models have tried to explain the multifaceted formation of drug addiction. In most addiction models, social factors are an important component; however, few empirical studies have investigated the social influences on the safe or risky choices of drug-addicted individuals during the abstinence stage. Objectives: To investigate the behavioral patterns of female methamphetamine abstainers under social influence. Methods: Thirty-seven female methamphetamine abstainers (average abstinence time: 8.61 ± 4.75 months) and 40 matched controls performed a gambling task in the presence of peers’ choices. We applied both model-free and computational model-based analysis to examine how the decision patterns differed with social influence between the two groups. Results: 1) the choice data from the two groups showed a social influence effect such that participants made more risky choices when others made risky choices; 2) overall, the female methamphetamine abstainers made more risky choices in the social influence task; and 3) in the computational model parameters, the female methamphetamine abstainers exhibited more nonconforming attitudes (with negative other-conferred utility) with respect to peer influence, whereas controls showed higher conformity to peers. Conclusion: Our findings provide the first objective evidence that female methamphetamine abstainers show peer nonconformity. This nonconformist tendency may be a potential behavioral marker to track drug addiction and help to elucidate the mechanisms of decisions made by female methamphetamine abstainers.

KEYWORDS:

• Methamphetamine
• social conformity
• social influence
• decision making
• computational modeling
• addiction

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Diksha Punia for her manuscript reading.

Financial disclosure

The authors report no relevant financial conflicts.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2016YFC0800901-Z03; the Philosophy and Social Sciences Project of Henan Province under Grant 2018BJY014; the Outstanding Foundation on Humanities and Social Sciences of Young People in Universities of Hebei Education Department under Grant BJ2014101.