Journal article
Attitudes toward pharmacological cognitive enhancement—a review
- Abstract:
- 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.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, pdf, 672.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.3389/fnsys.2014.00053
Authors
- Publisher:
- Frontiers Research Foundation
- Journal:
- Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience More from this journal
- Volume:
- 53
- Issue:
- 8
- Pages:
- 1-14
- Publication date:
- 2014-04-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1662-5137
- ISSN:
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1662-5137
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:462270
- UUID:
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uuid:1a30555f-713a-4009-bb8e-09be7e397681
- Local pid:
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pubs:462270
- Source identifiers:
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462270
- Deposit date:
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2014-05-08
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Schelle, Faulmüller, Caviola and Hewstone
- Copyright date:
- 2014
- Notes:
- Copyright © 2014 Schelle, Faulmüller, Caviola and Hewstone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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