Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping

Abstract

BackgroundSocial science studies of doping practices in sport rely predominantly on self-reports. Studies of psychoactive drug use indicate that self-reporting is characterised by under-reporting. Likewise doping practice is likely to be equally under-reported, if not more so. This calls for more sophisticated methods for such reporting and for independent, objective validation of its results. The aims of this study were: i) to contrast self-reported doping use with objective results from chemical hair analysis and ii) to investigate the influence of the discrepancy on doping attitudes, social projection, descriptive norms and perceived pressure to use doping.Methodology/Principal FindingsA doping attitudes questionnaire was developed and combined with a response latency-based implicit association test and hair sample analysis for key doping substances in 14 athletes selected from a larger sample (N = 82) to form contrast comparison groups. Results indicate that patterns of group differences in social projection, explicit attitude about and perceived pressure to use doping, vary depending on whether the user and non-user groups are defined by self-report or objectively verified through hair analysis. Thus, self-confessed users scored higher on social projection, explicit attitude to doping and perceived pressure. However, when a doping substance was detected in the hair of an athlete who denied doping use, their self-report evidenced extreme social desirability (negative attitude, low projection and low perceived pressure) and contrasted sharply with a more positive estimate of their implicit doping attitude.Conclusions/SignificanceHair analysis for performance enhancing substances has shown considerable potential in validating athletes' doping attitude estimations and admissions of use. Results not only confirm the need for improved self-report methodology for future research in socially-sensitive domains but also indicate where the improvements are likely to come from: as chemical validation remains expensive, a more realistic promise for large scale studies and online data collection efforts is held by measures of implicit social cognition.

Self-Control Self-Regulation, and Doping in Sport: A Test of the Strength-Energy Model

“…influenced by affirmation bias (Gucciardi, Jalleh, & Donovan, 2010;Petroczi et al, 2010). In addition, the size of the effects of self-control on the doping-related outcomes was relatively small, and the correlational design of study could not permit us to infer causality, so we have to interpret our findings in the context of these boundary conditions (Chan, Fung, Xing, & Hagger, 2014;Chan & Hagger, 2012).…”

Understanding and Using the Brief Implicit Association Test: Recommended Scoring Procedures

“…Also, the BIAT has found application in many studies already [10][11][12][13] The present studies analyzed data from a very large data collection in a study that administrated a random selection of measures of attitudes regarding race, politics and the self from a large pool of possible indirect and direct attitude measures [14], comparing the psychometric qualities of seven different indirect measures on a wide variety of criteria. The BIAT was the best of the seven measures in 8 out of the 29 criteria used to evaluate the measures as measures of attitudinal preference, and the second best in another 8 criteria (always outperformed only by the IAT).…”

Impact of multidisciplinary research on advancing anti-doping efforts

“…In general, research into doping and development of evidence-based primary prevention of athlete doping behaviour, including the evaluation of such interventions, rely on self-report methodology (Backhouse et al 2007, Petróczi et al 2010a. The majority of this research has turned a blind eye to the limitations associated with self-reports: introspective limits and the potentially distorting effect of socially desirable responding.…”

“…From the array of psychological assessments briefly reviewed above, IAT has been developed in recent years to measure implicit attitudes towards doping (Lotz and Hagemann 2007, Petróczi et al 2010a. The two IAT protocols have been recently tested and compared resulting in useful observations and recommendations for refinements (Brand and Melzer 2011).…”

“…Recently, concerns have been raised about a potential distorting effect of SD observed in self-reported social cognitive measures related to doping (Gucciardi et al 2010, Petróczi et al 2010a, c, Petróczi and Nepusz 2011. Key studies and outcomes for this research programme into doping behaviour calling upon analytical and social sciences are given in Table 1.…”