Abstract
BackgroundDespite the growing body of literature and putative links between the use of ergogenic nutritional supplements, doping and illicit drugs, it remains unclear whether, in athletes' minds, doping aligns with illicit behaviour or with functional use of chemical or natural preparations. To date, no attempt has been made to quantitatively explore athletes' mental representation of doping in relation to illegality and functionality.MethodsA convenience sample of student athletes from a large South-Eastern Australian university responded to an on-line survey. Competitive athletes (n = 46) were grouped based on self-reported use as follows: i) none used (30%), ii) supplement only (22%), iii) illicit only (26%) and iv) both supplements and illicit drug use (22%). Whereas no athlete reported doping, data provided on projected supplement-, doping- and drug use by the four user groups allowed evaluation of doping-related cognition in the context of self-reported supplement- and illicit drug taking behaviour; and comparison between these substances.ResultsA significantly higher prevalence estimation was found for illicit drug use and a trend towards a biased social projection emerged for supplement use. Doping estimates by user groups showed mixed results, suggesting that doping had more in common with the ergogenic nutritional supplement domain than the illicit drug domain.ConclusionsAssessing the behavioural domain to which doping belongs to in athletes' mind would greatly advance doping behaviour research toward prevention and intervention. Further investigation refining the peculiarity of the mental representation of doping with a larger study sample, controlling for knowledge of doping and other factors, is warranted.
Highlights
Despite the growing body of literature and putative links between the use of ergogenic nutritional supplements, doping and illicit drugs, it remains unclear whether, in athletes’ minds, doping aligns with illicit behaviour or with functional use of chemical or natural preparations
Nutritional supplement use, which has been considered as a gateway to doping by many [12,13,14,20] is common among emerging and elite athletes [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28] and has raised concerns on its own account owing to potentially harmful interactions from combined use and high dosage [29,30,31,32]
With the view of gaining some insight into athletes’ implicit mental representation, we focused on social projection as an indirect indicator of mental representation of doping
Summary
Despite the growing body of literature and putative links between the use of ergogenic nutritional supplements, doping and illicit drugs, it remains unclear whether, in athletes’ minds, doping aligns with illicit behaviour or with functional use of chemical or natural preparations. A number of athletes have talked publicly about their reasons and motives for doping use, contrasting perceived obligations and duty to perform well with guilt and the shame of lying. In addition to the fact that many athletes consider doping as part of professional sport, most openly talk about experimentation with non-prohibited substances such as over-the-counter painkillers and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, caffeine and other non-prohibited stimulants [15,16]. Nutritional supplement use, which has been considered as a gateway to doping by many [12,13,14,20] is common among emerging and elite athletes [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28] and has raised concerns on its own account owing to potentially harmful interactions from combined use and high dosage [29,30,31,32]
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