Stakeholder perspectives and reactions to “academic” cognitive enhancement: Unsuspected meaning of ambivalence and analogies

Forlini, Cynthia; Racine, Éric

doi:10.1177/0963662510385062

Cited by 40 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Distributive justice is one of the cardinal concerns of the enhancement debate, mentioned as an important issue by nearly all commentators [22,23,57]. One interpretation of our results is that they contradict a large body of empirical research focused on concerns regarding inequality of access to pharmacological CAS enhancement [22,46,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64]. It is worth noting that the key difference between our results and these previous studies is that participants were unprompted as to potential causes of their discomfort towards the use of pharmacological CAS enhancement.…”

Section: The Public Endorses Fair Distribution Of Mental Capitalcontrasting

confidence: 73%

Empirical Support for the Moral Salience of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in the Debate Over Cognitive, Affective and Social Enhancement

2014

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The ambiguity regarding whether a given intervention is perceived as enhancement or as therapy might contribute to the angst that the public expresses with respect to endorsement of enhancement. We set out to develop empirical data that explored this. We used Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit participants (N= 2776) from Canada and the United States. Each individual was randomly assigned to read one (and only one) vignette describing the use of a pill to enhance one of 12 cognitive, affective or social (CAS) domains. The vignettes described a situation in which an individual was using a pill to enhance the relevant domain under one of two possible enhancement conditions, one perceived as enhancing above the norm (EAN), what most people recognize as a clear case of enhancement, whereas the other perceived as enhancing towards the norm (ETN), with the individual using the enhancement having a modest, but subclinical deficit. Participants were asked how comfortable they were with the individual using the enhancement and about the impact the enhancement might have had in the individuals' success in life. We found that irrespective of the domain to be enhanced, participants felt significantly more comfortable with ETN than with EAN, and they regarded the enhancement intervention as contributing to greater success in life with ETN rather than EAN. These data demonstrate that the therapy enhancement distinction is morally salient to the public, and that this distinction contributes to the angst that people feel when considering the propriety of CAS enhancement.

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Section: The Public Endorses Fair Distribution Of Mental Capitalcontrasting

confidence: 73%

Empirical Support for the Moral Salience of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in the Debate Over Cognitive, Affective and Social Enhancement

2014

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“…More than half of the participants described PCE as a form of cheating, while most of the others explicitly reported that they did not find it unfair in comparison to other available methods for performance improvement (e.g., coffee). In contrast to coffee, focus group participants saw PCE as a form of cheating similar to the use of steroids (Forlini and Racine, 2012b). Also, participants showed dissent and indecision about whether PCE use should be seen as cheating or not (Forlini and Racine, 2012a).…”

Section: Fairnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes toward pharmacological cognitive enhancementâ€”a review

Schelle

Faulmüller

Caviola

et al. 2014

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

117

109

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A primary means for the augmentation of cognitive brain functions is “pharmacological cognitive enhancement” (PCE). The term usually refers to the off-label use of medical substances to improve mental performance in healthy individuals. With the final aim to advance the normative debate taking place on that topic, several empirical studies have been conducted to assess the attitudes toward PCE in the public, i.e., in groups outside of the academic debate. In this review, we provide an overview of the 40 empirical studies published so far, reporting both their methodology and results. Overall, we find that several concerns about the use of PCE are prevalent in the public. These concerns largely match those discussed in the normative academic debate. We present our findings structured around the three most common concerns: medical safety, coercion, and fairness. Fairness is divided into three subthemes: equality of opportunity, honesty, and authenticity. Attitudes regarding some concerns are coherent across studies (e.g., coercion), whereas for others we find mixed results (e.g., authenticity). Moreover, we find differences in how specific groups—such as users, nonusers, students, parents, and health care providers—perceive PCE: a coherent finding is that nonusers display more concerns regarding medical safety and fairness than users. We discuss potential psychological explanations for these differences.

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“…However, we see the level of ambivalence and criticism that we observed of the BDMA, and neuroscience more generally, as an adaptive trait (cf. Forlini & Racine, 2012). We think it indicates an understanding of the complexity of both addiction and neuroscience and is beneficial in enabling addicted persons to appraise the treatments that are offered to them and thus in being able to provide informed consent to their use.…”

Section: Explaining Diversity and Ambivalence: Beyond (Mis)understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

Morphett

Carter

Lucke

et al. 2016

International Journal of Drug Policy

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Please cite this article as: Meurk, C., Morphett, K., Carter, A., Weier, M., Lucke, J., and Hall, W.,Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: people with addictions deliberate about neuroscience, International Journal of Drug Policy (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10. 1016/j.drugpo.2016.03.004 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. AbstractBackground According to the 'brain disease model of addiction', addiction is a chronic condition the symptoms of which reflect persistent changes in neural functioning produced by long-term drug use. Scholars have argued both for and against the validity and usefulness of this way of conceptualising addiction, which has been variously described as emancipatory and detrimental to addicted persons. In this paper we explore how people with addictions make sense of the brain disease concept and the extent to which they find it useful. Methods: We conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with persons in treatment for drug and alcohol addiction recruited through a variety of channels. Transcripts were analysed by combining a health identity approach with thematic analysis. Results: We describe participants' understandings of how they became addicted and what role, if any, neurobiological conceptions play in their explanations. Our findings highlight the hopeful and sceptical viewpoints of addicted individuals on the value of addiction neuroscience ideas and neurotechnologies. Conclusions: These viewpoints shed some light on the diverse and divergent ways that people with addictions make sense of neurobiological ideas and technologies. It also describes when, and how, neurobiological explanations and the 'brain disease' model can be helpful to addicted persons. Some of the limitations of the brain disease model become apparent in the complex ways in which neurobiological explanations and labels are incorporated into lay understandings. In order to be more useful to addicted persons, neurobiological explanations should be provided as part of a more complex explanation of addiction and the brain than the BDMA offers, and should not be given a 'disease' label.

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Stakeholder perspectives and reactions to “academic” cognitive enhancement: Unsuspected meaning of ambivalence and analogies

Cited by 40 publications

References 31 publications

Empirical Support for the Moral Salience of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in the Debate Over Cognitive, Affective and Social Enhancement

Empirical Support for the Moral Salience of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in the Debate Over Cognitive, Affective and Social Enhancement

Attitudes toward pharmacological cognitive enhancementâ€”a review

Scepticism and hope in a complex predicament: People with addictions deliberate about neuroscience

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