Exploring Sports Ethics, Drugs and Enhancement in Sport
In sport, a broad array of substances with putative or established performance-enhancement properties has been used. Several elements in the game are entirely acceptable, while a particular set, which is revised annually, has been prohibited (Mottram, Mottram & Chester, 2018). Thus, the use of any of such banned substances in sport has been declared as generally cheating. In the progressively tolerant culture of technical human and pharmacological enhancements, the standard traditional normative method to sports anti-doping involves; advising athletes on why they should avoid expanding their athletic performance and ability deviating from otherwise positive values that have been attached to human enhancement and improvement in the society (Mottram et al., 2018). Today, Mazanov (2016) suggests that performance enhancement and doping have been the epitome of different normative expectations over the goal, that is, performance enhancement and the approaches by which such as a goal is attained probably by drug use. The elements of the player’s personality structure, together with the social setting, represent risk factors for drugs and body enhancement behavior in sport (Mottram et al., 2018). Sports psychologists and sports clinical practitioners need to recognize that players demonstrate dangerous flaws in their health decision making whenever winning is more given precedence above survival (Mottram et al., 2018). Besides, the player’s social world should not necessarily support or reflect public discourses where drug use in the improvement of sporting performance is contrary to the sporting spirit. Therefore drugs and enhancement in sport should be banned in the game.
The substance use in amateur and recreational sport is well understood in the Thomas theorem sense: “If people think that something is real, it is real in its consequences” (Gleaves, 2013). In amateur and recreational sport, the absence of doping tests, together with their results, demonstrate that no institutional agent which define behaviors as doping. If a response is typically considered as doping, the consequences, including reputation loss and social marginalization, are correspondingly effective sanctions, irrespective of whether the behavior is doping in a permitted sense.
A study that was intended to particularly identify social-psychological determinants that underly the use of doping drugs by some adult gym users who practiced powerlifting, bodybuilding, combat, or fitness was conducted. According to Gleaves (2013), the study framework was founded on Social Cognitive Theory and planned behavior theory, which describes behavior as an intended function and, in turn, intention as attitudes function, self-efficacy, and social influences (McNamee & Møller, 2011). The proximal determinants seemed to be impacted by the background characteristics, including gender, age, performance-enhancing drugs knowledge, alcohol use, and other doping drugs (Outram, 2013). Since the performance-enhancing drug substances in the study were limited to the ‘banned substances,’ it did never included products involving dietary vitamins and supplements. McNamee & Møller (2011) suggest that about three social-psychological determinants in this study proved most relevant to the purpose to use performance-enhancing drugs due to personal norms, beliefs around performance improvement as well as perceived use by the others. Concerning these personals norms, the results showed that ex-users and users generally share similar ideas on performance-enhancing drugs (McNamee & Møller, 2011). The personal standards on using such drugs were usually less restricted compared to that of the non-users (Sage & Eitzen, 2013). The most users anticipated for more optimistic effects of such medications on individual performance compared to non-users, while also believing that the bodies would be rendered more powerful, better shaped, and more muscled (Maguire, 2011). The participants further found that such valued results would only be achieved within a shorter period compared to avoiding using drugs at all.
Considering the theoretical implications, the results in this study indicated the additional value of the personal norms. While the own patterns are not accounted for by the planned behavior theory, this study showed that they are generally strongly linked to the intention of the application of performance-enhancing drugs (McNamee & Møller, 2011). This aspect proposes that personal norms need to be involved in the planned behavior theory, especially in controversial player behaviors, including the application of performance-enhancing drugs. Further, Outram (2013) states that different studies have confirmed that such personal norms can be relevant as social influences, attitudes, and self-efficacy. The application of performance-enhancing drugs is, therefore, projected by social forces and reactions.
The phenomenon of making use of prohibited substances by some athletes, with a particular resolution of artificially growing performance, has been entrenched in antiquity and actively plays out today, feed and supported by the general professional sport, that has become a public issue and a trade (Maguire, 2011). According to the humanist psychology, the individual is free to decide over his life, being capable of taking decisions and of self-commanding (McNamee & Møller, 2011). The efforts to a spotless sport taken by militants, including the United States, need to be grounded on a decent knowledge of the personality features of athletes and the support the impact of influences over them. By initiating a behaviorist model, through using the Theory of Planned Behavior and Self-efficacy Theory typically as determinant models of doping (Outram, 2013). The integration of the two theories leads to three significant constructs explaining such behavior, that is, attitudes, self-efficacy, and social influences (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2013). Such constructs are generally influenced by primary variables that include; knowledge, sports features, personal goals, and the demographic features (McNamee & Møller, 2011). This concept is based on the use of intimidation theory that explains the purpose of doping drugs for unlawfully performance enhancement (Maguire, 2011). Intimidation theory considers that the decision of athletes to use doping drugs is a sign of intimidation analysis such as sanctions, relative to the benefits such as sponsorships well-adjusted by situational aspects including the drug type (McNamee & Møller, 2011). The empiric testing of intimidation theory has established that such a model has the quality of explaining psychological influences, on which the decision of athlete to use performance enhancement drug is based (Outram, 2013). Most of the theories that are attempting to describe the approach of applying drugs in sport are generally limited to the decision of athletes based on the social-economic and costs benefits of using such substances (Vargo et al., 2014). There is a need to include investigating the situation where drug use gives an impression and unveil the circumstances where the values, presumptions, and benefits that enable doping in sport are generally produced (Waddington et al., 2013). In the view of the same purpose, it is possible to develop models of drug use in sport, combining the micro-orientations of athletes with interpersonal behavior with structure, macro-orientation, and context culture of the game (Outram, 2013). It is possible to use the contextualized approaches to put a policy of minimizing doping use and minimizing harmfulness (Giulianotti, 2015). This aspect would allow sports organizations and athletes to control doping use and encourage sports competitions to be undertaken in a healthy and safe environment. Decisions on intentional doping are limited concerning the set of individual, social, and situational variables.
Precisely, social science investigators can successfully contribute to generally a prevention-based prevention model that examines how an individual, group, and institution/organization might impact drugs in sport. Doping prevalence can be higher in thoughtful fitness and recreational sports (Vargo, James, Agyeman, MacPhee, McIntyre, Ronca, & Petróczi, 2014). While drug use by adolescents seems growing, the use of drugs by elite athletes has even been shown to get to higher levels compared to non-sporting public. A particular proposed solution to the doping issue involves more demanding testing protocols. Testing protocols include more rate of random doping evaluates, enforced clinical follow-ups, robust legislation contrary to the possessing doping substances, and severer penalties for the athletes using the effects of the content (Vargo et al., 2014). Such a damage reduction model presents a fundamentally utilitarian position whereby ethical judgment, together with moral certitude replaced by practicalities of management of multiple potential problems related to the elite sport. It is essential to maintain the position that the present World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) strategy of zero tolerance may neither eliminate doping in sport nor shield the well-being and health of athletes (Partridge, Lucke & Hall, 2014). Many elite athletes argue that they would attempt specific performance-enhancing substances as much as such materials remain unbanned. Protecting health seems to play an insignificant role in the performance-enhancing substance use decision-making process (Partridge et al., 2014). Athletes never rely on several immutable ethical boundaries (Giulianotti, 2015). The somewhat ‘clean’ athletes frequently apply performance-enhancing substances, which never appear on the official prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) (Waddington, Christiansen, Gleaves, Hoberman & Møller, 2013). Giulianotti (2015) affirms that while the so-called gateway theories can deserve the severe scrutiny, they have lately received relative to recreational and illegal drugs, some original work in sport proposes that substance ‘creep’ and doping should be strongly considered mainly in respect to emerging evidence linking favorable perceptions on performance-enhancing substance advantages with their consumption in elite sport.
In due course, it is vital to support a single policy model which is driven by the fundamentalist worry for punishment, abstinence and zero tolerance, and also underpinned by a principled concern for the athlete agency, autonomy, and safety. Every position among the ones mentioned above has weaknesses and strengths. Still, there is a need to determine the model that can ensure most sports’ integrity, deliver the best results for athletes and players, and that offers the opportunity for other sports stakeholders. Nevertheless, such policy opportunities are challenging to accurately evaluate, since bias and subjectivity inevitably end up in an impartial analysis, even wherever a lot of unbiased evidence is compiled. The concept of zero tolerance is possible to deliver lesser levels of use. Still, it will influence a player or athletes’ civil liberties, together with general harms to the players might not necessarily be dropped since the banned performance enhancement substance use presents just a single of several catalysts for impairment to happen through and in sport. Hence a harm reduction of performance enhancement method would deliver a more substantial autonomy to players and athletes while pro-actively in quest of containing the harm to the users and the individuals around them.
References
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