Reinout Wiers
Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, University of Amsterdam
Reinout Wiers is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, where he leads the Addiction Development and Psychopathology (ADAPT) Lab - adapt-lab.nl
He is a (co)director of the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Urban Mental Health - centreforurbanmentalhealth.com
He is also involved as co-PI in the gravitation project New Science of Mental Disorders, where he leads the WP on the role of cognitive control in the development and treatment of mental disorders from the network perspective - nsmd.eu
Main Research Interests
Wiers conducts research on the neurocognitive processes involved in addiction and related disorders, aiming to develop effective interventions.
In 2009, Wiers introduced the alcohol-related approach-avoidance task (AAT), a tool for assessing implicit appetitive tendencies toward alcohol. Building on this, he developed automatic action tendency re-training to reduce alcohol consumption among students and increase abstinence rates in alcoholic patients, with subsequent studies validating these interventions.
In 2010, Wiers conducted the first randomized controlled trial on attentional retraining for alcohol use disorders and explored neurocognitive predictors of addiction trajectories. His work also includes interventions such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for addiction and the development of training programs for other disorders, including anxiety and depression.
Wiers is involved in integrating Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) applications, including mobile and gamified formats
Publication Highlights
The book provides a novel examination of the nature of addiction, suggesting that by exploring akrasia—the tendency to act against one’s better judgement—we can better understand our addictive behaviors. It offers an alternative to the dominant biomedical model of addiction as a chronic brain disease by looking at the nature of how we make decisions and proposing the idea that biased choice is central to addiction.
The book looks at both classic substance use disorders and newer “addictions” to smartphones, meat and fossil fuels. It discusses current perspectives on free will in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and the questions surrounding free will versus determinism, including our ability to steer our behaviors guided by the promise of future outcomes. Different perspectives on addiction and choice are presented in an eloquent style, and illustrated by personal stories.