Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research: Problems with atheoretical and confirmatory research approaches in the study of behavioral addictions
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Background and Aims: This commentary is written in response to a paper by Billieux, Schimmenti, Khazaal, Maurage and Hereen (2015) published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions. Methods: It supports and extends the arguments by Billieux, Schimmenti et al. (2015): that the study of behavioral addictions too often rests on atheoretical and confirmatory research approaches. This tends to lead to theories that lack specificity and a neglect of the underlying processes that might explain why repetitive problem behaviors occur. Results: In this commentary I extend the arguments by Billieux, Schimmenti et al. (2015) and argue that such research approaches might take us further away from conceptualizing psychiatric diagnoses that can be properly validated, which is already a problem in the field. Furthermore, I discuss whether the empirical support for conceptualizing repetitive problem behaviors as addictions might rest on research practices that have been methodologically biased to produce a result congruent with the proposal that substance addictions and behavioral addictions share similar traits. Conclusions: I conclude by presenting a number of ways of going forward, chief of which is the proposal that we might wish to go beyond a priori assumptions of addiction in favor of identifying the essential problem manifestations for each new potential behavioral addiction.
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Even when a university student rates a loss-of-control item high on a Likert scale, the answer does not necessarily have clinical relevance.
“However, even when a university student rates this type of item high on a Likert scale, the answer does not necessarily have clinical relevance (Billieux, Schimmenti, Khazaal, Maurage, & Heeren, 2015; Kardefelt-Winther, 2015).”
From Is smartphone addiction really an addiction? (2018) · cites this paper as Kardefelt-Winther, 2015
The Conclusions (page not supplied) argue that surveys of addiction symptoms alone do not provide the understanding needed to judge whether a behavior is an addiction. This supports the caution that an item response need not be clinically meaningful, but the paper does not specifically discuss university students, Likert ratings, or a highly rated loss-of-control item. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Kardefelt-Winther, D.
- Affiliations
- Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Centre for Psychiatry Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
- Venue
- Journal of Behavioral Addictions
- Publisher
- Akademiai Kiado Zrt.
- Published
- 2015-09
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 126-129
- ISSN
- 2062-5871 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4627667
- OpenAlex
- W2333294374
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Behavioral Addictions (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Repository of the Academy's Library (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Gambling Behavior and Treatments
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
- Keywords
- behavioral addiction, psychiatric diagnosis, diagnostic validity, confirmatory research, methodological bias, substance addiction, conceptualization of addiction
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Models, Theoretical, Behavior, Addictive, Behavioral Research
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