Addictive Behavior as Molar Behavioral Allocation: Distinguishing Efficient and Final Causes in Translational Research and Practice

Objective: Translational research on addictive behaviors viewed as molar behavioral allocation is critically reviewed. This work relates rates of behavior to rates of reinforcement over time and has been fruitfully applied to addictive behaviors, which involve excessive allocation to short-term rewards with longer term costs. Method: Narrative critical review. Results: This approach distinguishes between final and efficient causes of discrete behaviors. The former refers to temporally extended behavior patterns into which the act fits. The latter refers to environmental stimuli or internal psychological mechanisms immediately preceding the act. Final causes are most clear when addictive behaviors are studied over time as a function of changing environmental circumstances. Discrete acts of addictive behavior are part of an extended/molar behavior pattern when immediate constraints on engagement are low and few rewarding alternatives are available. Research framed by efficient causes often use behavioral economic simulation tasks as individual difference variables that precede discrete acts. Such measures show higher demand for addictive commodities and steeper discounting in various risk groups, but whether they predict molar addictive behavior patterning is understudied. Conclusions: Although efficient cause analysis has dominated translational research, research supports viewing addictive behavior as molar behavioral allocation. Increasing concern with rate variables underpinning final cause analysis and considering how study methods and temporal units of analysis inform an efficient or final cause analysis may advance understanding of addictive behaviors that occur over time in dynamic environmental contexts. This approach provides linkages between behavioral science and disciplines that study social determinants of health. Public Health Significance Statement Addictive behaviors are dynamic patterns spread over time and occur within broader dynamic environmental contexts. Research to date, however, has tended to focus on identifying the causes of addictive behavior either based on attributes within the person or the immediate context surrounding a discrete episode, in contrast to investigating how addictive behavior patterns emerge, are maintained, and remit over time as environmental circumstances change. Broadening research and theory to include both kinds of analysis holds promise for advancing understanding of the controlling variables of addictive