Beliefs: addiction role

The common features of emotion and addiction must be seen against the background of two important differences. Emotions are natural and universal. Without asserting that there are some emotions that are found in all societies, it can be safely said that all societies feature some emotions. Addiction is artificial and nonuniversal, an accident of the interaction between brain reward machinery evolved for other purposes and certain chemical substances. At the same time, emotions are much more belief dependent than addictive cravings and drug-induced states. Because social life is embedded in an extraordinarily dense network of beliefs, emotions are central to all human activities. In comparison, the role of cognition and even perception in addiction is sharply limited. 

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