Dying to Win: Doping in Sport and the Development of Anti-Doping Policy

Doping is typically referred to by some legal/moral heuristics, labelling the activity illegal and unfair, and condemning doping users as cheats and rogues Whilst these heuristics accurately reflect the general social norms and the official stance, qualitative research suggests that they may be in conflict with the way doping user athletes think, seeing doping as a morally questionable but effective means to achieving performance goals Congruently, quantitative studies show that athletes’ mental representations of doping are more closely aligned with substances representing functionality than legality, and they follow the behavioural pathways athletes choose with regard to doping use and revealing information about it As long as the dominant quantitative research paradigm follows the legal/moral route, the incongruence between reality and the faulty assumptions about reality limits the ecological validity of the research findings This concept paper argues for progressing quantitative social cognition research with new models, measurement tools and methodologies that shift away from the dominance of moralistic frames To facilitate this progress, two inter-related conceptual models are proposed The first is an incremental-functional model of doping to reflect the motivated, goal-driven and progressive nature of athletes’ involvement in performance enhancing practices The second is a model of an athlete doping mindset which conceptualises the link between the goal as performance enhancement and the functional and moral aspects of doping as purposive, goal-driven behaviour to enable empirical testing Quantitative investigations into doping-related social cognition should capture the moral-functional duality and acknowledge functionality to make meaningful contributions to anti-doping efforts

The doping mindset—Part I: Implications of the Functional Use Theory on mental representations of doping

Social Psychology of Doping in Sport: A Mixed Studies Narrative Synthesis

Research in doping has focused on potential intervention strategies, increasingly targeting predicting factors. Yet, findings are inconsistent, mostly athlete-centred and explain only limited variances in behaviour. This critical review aims to (a) summarize studies that identified predictors of doping intentions, susceptibility, and behaviour in elite athletes and to (b) analyse in how far previous research included aspects beyond athlete-centred approaches, such as context and sporting culture. We reviewed 14 studies that focused on elite athletes. Situational temptation, attitudes, and subjective norms seem to be strong predicting variables of doping intentions (r ≥ 0.50), but intention was no predictor for behaviour. Attitudes were a significant predictor for both, doping susceptibility (r = 0.47) and behaviour (r = 0.30). Most of the predictors are athlete-centred and ignore macro-level factors that might help to explain how certain individual traits impact on the decision making process. The findings from this review call for a critical discussion of whether current doping-prevention research needs to take new directions. We propose future research to bridge findings of psychologists and sociologists, as it appears that doping behaviour cannot be explained by ignoring the one or the other. Impacts of sporting culture that have been identified in qualitative approaches need to be integrated in future quantitative approaches to test for its external validity. Inclusion of both, micro- and macro level factors may enable an integrative prevention program that creates a sporting culture without doping.

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Predictors of doping intentions, susceptibility, and behaviour of elite athletes: a meta-analytic review

Blood doping practices in sports have been around for at least half a century and will likely remain for several years to come. The main reason for the various forms of blood doping to be common is that they are easy to perform, and the effects on exercise performance are gigantic. Yet another reason for blood doping to be a popular illicit practice is that detection is difficult. For autologous blood transfusions, for example, no direct test exists, and the direct testing of misuse with recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEpo) has proven very difficult despite a test exists. Future blood doping practice will likely include the stabilization of the transcription factor hypoxia‐inducible factor which leads to an increased endogenous erythropoietin synthesis. It seems unrealistic to develop specific test against such drugs (and the copies hereof originating from illegal laboratories). In an attempt to detect and limit blood doping, the World Anti‐Doping Agency (WADA) has launched the Athlete Biological Passport where indirect markers for all types of blood doping are evaluated on an individual level. The approach seemed promising, but a recent publication demonstrates the system to be incapable of detecting even a single subject as ‘suspicious’ while treated with rhEpo for 10–12 weeks. Sad to say, the hope that the 2012 London Olympics should be cleaner in regard to blood doping seems faint. We propose that WADA strengthens the quality and capacities of the National Anti‐Doping Agencies and that they work more efficiently with the international sports federations in an attempt to limit blood doping.

The evolving science of detection of 'blood doping'

Aim This study aims to examine the circumstances which athletes say affect their (hypothetical) considerations of whether to dope or not and explore the differences between athletes of different gender, age and sport type. Methods 645 elite athletes (mean age: 22.12; response rate: 43%) representing 40 sports completed a web-based questionnaire. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in a situation in which they had to decide whether to dope or not to dope and then evaluate how different circumstances would affect their decisions. Results Multiple circumstances had an effect on athletes’ hypothetical decisions. The most effective deterrents were related to legal and social sanctions, side-effects and moral considerations. Female athletes and younger athletes evaluated more reasons as deterrents than older, male athletes. When confronted with incentives to dope, the type of sport was often a more decisive factor. Top incentives were related to qualified medical assistance, improved health or faster recovery from injury, the low risk of being caught and the threat posed to an elite career. Conclusions Our results reveal that numerous circumstances affect athletes’ thoughts on doping and athletes of different gender, age and sport type reacted differently to a variety of circumstances that may potentially deter or trigger doping. Particularly notable findings were the potential role of doctors in athletes’ doping and that the current punitive anti-doping approach seems to deter athletes, although the fear of social sanctions was almost as great a deterrent. Implications Anti-doping prevention strategies should be diversified to target specific groups of athletes.

To dope or not to dope: Elite athletes’ perceptions of doping deterrents and incentives

Today the main doping deterrence strategy is to ban athletes from sport if caught This study examines whether Danish elite athletes perceive the ban as a deterrent and how they evaluate social, se

Mette Lykke Knudsen

Papers

To dope or not to dope: Elite athletes’ perceptions of doping deterrents and incentives

Athletes' perceptions of anti-doping sanctions: the ban from sport versus social, financial and self-imposed sanctions

Anti-doping policies and reasons (not) to dope: A need for diversified prevention strategies?