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.
Highlights
The widespread use of performance enhancing drugs [1], along with advances in performance enhancements coupled with the increasing costs of continuous development of the testing methods [2] have led anti-doping strategies to turn to identifying predictors and/or barriers of doping behaviour, over and above sanctioning
Social science doping research has a long standing tradition in investigating social cognition and personality traits in a quest to find a set of characters that clearly distinguishes athletes who engage in doping practices and those who do not [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
The authors concluded that the doping Implicit Association Test (IAT) could further benefit from a refined stimuli set and improved protocol, the results indicated that implicit assessment of doping attitude has the ability to make a key contribution to the understanding of cognitive processes behind doping behaviour
Summary
The widespread use of performance enhancing drugs [1], along with advances in performance enhancements coupled with the increasing costs of continuous development of the testing methods [2] have led anti-doping strategies to turn to identifying predictors and/or barriers of doping behaviour, over and above sanctioning. Over the past two decades, convincing evidence has led to suggestions that the human mind operates in dual, conscientious and unconscientious, mode [17,18,19], key components of the cognitive processes influencing behaviour are partially hidden from people’s awareness or under limited ability to control Owing to this phenomenon, it has been acknowledged that self-report measures are restricted in capturing the complexity of the cognitive processes that underlie social actions, social psychologists have turned to incorporating implicit assessment of the relevant cognitions. 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
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