Scientists continue to grapple with the question: Does cannabis actually make people lazy in the long run? ”Cannabis amotivational syndrome” is a hypothesis bubbling around for years that suggests regular cannabis use can lead to apathy, or more specifically, less engagement in goal-directed behavior.
Runner and author Josiah Hesse points out that this stereotype was ramped up by former presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
There is peer-reviewed evidence for and against cannabis amotivational syndrome theory, and the results are far from conclusive, at least in the eyes of the medical community. A previous study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors goes to show how much back-and-forth there is on the topic of reward sensitivity and motivation. Motivation isn’t exactly easy to measure.
But a new study, “Effort-related decision making and cannabis use among college students,” published January 27 in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology—a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association—disputes the cannabis-induced amotivational syndrome theory, instead finding no evidence to support it.
Previous research suggests that cannabis consumption has an indirect effect on dopamine production. The mesolimbic system controls motivational salience, reinforcement learning, fear and motivation. The research suggests the more cannabis that is consumed—the greater the negative effect on the system that controls motivation, i.e. creating a lazy stoner.
(The endocannabinoid system is also linked to reward saliency and motivation, with cannabis also being explored for its potential benefits in this department.)
To test the amotivational syndrome hypothesis, scientists in the new study observed 47 college-aged participants. Over half of the pool of respondents—25—are regular cannabis consumers, and 68 percent of these match the criteria for “cannabis use disorder,” the