Amara has developed an alcohol addiction. She always pours herself a large glass of wine as soon as she hears her partner's car pull into the driveway after work, and whenever she sits on her balcony in the evening, she experiences a powerful urge to drink. She finds that drinking wine helps her block out the feelings of loneliness and stress from her demanding job as a corporate lawyer, and she notes that she first started drinking heavily during a highly stressful period when she was preparing for her final law exams.
When she first started hosting dinner parties, her friends would compliment her sophisticated taste in fine wines, but now that she drinks daily, her friends have expressed deep concern and some have started avoiding socialising with her. Amara becomes extremely anxious, shaky, and suffers from severe headaches if she does not have a drink by mid-afternoon.
Amara's mother drank heavily at home throughout Amara's childhood, and during her university days, her close-knit group of flatmates would regularly play drinking games together before going out. When asked about her drinking, Amara attributes her habit to watching her mother use alcohol to cope with family arguments when Amara was growing up.
Assess the effectiveness of one learning explanation to account for Amara's alcohol addiction.
You must make reference to the context in your answer.
Practise Edexcel A Level Psychology Content with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 1,059 questions covering Issues around drug taking, Biological explanations of drug addiction, Learning explanations of drug addiction, Treatments for drug addiction, Anti-drug campaign and strategies, Individual differences, and Developmental psychology, matched to the Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.
