Melissa Salmon
Ph.D. Student
Melissa Salmon鈥檚 research focuses on promoting positive behaviour change among people living with addiction. Specifically, she is interested in how perceptions of one鈥檚 past and future can help people to quit or cut down on addictive behaviours, such as problem gambling. Currently, the main strategy of helping people to change addictive behaviour is to focus them on a better possible future without the behaviour. However, Salmon鈥檚 research suggests that nostalgic reverie, or a sentimental longing, for the life that was lived before addiction can also motivate behaviour change. Her current project explores the conditions in which longing for a future free of addiction and longing for one鈥檚 past that was free of addiction might motivate or undermine behaviour change. She is using a mixed-methods approach to answer this research question for her dissertation involving first-person experiential narratives, correlation, and experimental design among problem gamblers.
Keywords: addiction, behaviour change, nostalgia, gambling