Abstract
Doping use is considered as a deviant behavior in sport contexts, and it is necessary to recognize preventive factors to shut down the negative consequences. We proposed that athletes experiencing loss of personal significance would be more prone to doping use intentions. This pathway should occur through the effect of the enhanced predominance of obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion that such athletes experience concerning their sport activity, which, in turn, facilitates the adoption of moral disengagement strategies to find justifications for it, when they perceive that significant others approve their intention. The study relied on a cross-over design, with a convenience sample of 437 athletes recruited at four sports sciences Universities evenly distributed in Italy. Questionnaires administered contained a validated tool based on Kruglanski’s theorizing on radical and deviant behavior (e.g., Loss of Significance, Obsessive, and Harmonious passion) and deriving from social cognitive theory (e.g., Moral disengagement). Results of the study tested a serial mediation moderated model, which links the different variables to explain the influence they have on the intentions to use doping. Overall, this research suggests a motivational dynamic that may be at the heart of illicit behaviors in sport, such as using drugs-enhancing performance potentially among athletes of all kinds.
Highlights
The use of doping is recognized as a relevant issue in sport
People are more likely to act and experience outcomes related to the predominant passion at that time [31,32]. According to this within-person differences in construct dimensions approach, in the present research, we focused our analysis on the predominance type of passion, on the predominance of Obsessive passion (OP) over Harmonious passion (HP) that in previous research was generally associated with more negative outcomes [31] and with radical and deviant behavior [32]
We propose that for individuals seeking to restore personal significance, the doping possibility is facilitated by their enhanced obsession with their sportive activities, which, in turn, augments the facility to adopting moral disengagement strategies to find justifications for it, especially when they perceive that significant others of their social network would approve and encourage such behavior
Summary
We argue that viewing doping only as a means of “winning” may fail to consider less recognizable motivations behind such behavior. Some risk behaviors are engaged in when perceived as relevant to the person’s motivation, in other words, they may represent a person’s attempt to fulfill current motivations or needs, as scholars have previously suggested [5]. Deepening this view, doping behavior can be examined as a means of satisfying more essential needs of the person. As far as we know, this is the first attempt to apply the SQT framework to doping behaviors in sports
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