what’s wrong with using steroids? a synopsis of the psychology of ped use.

most people, at least most readers of this blog, likely consider the use of performance enhancing drugs to be wrong. while we can certainly debate the degree of wrongness, and indeed have done so on this website, a psychology paper published last month in the journal of personality and social psychology explored the underlying reasons behind this perceived wrongness.

the authors of this paper, lady, walco, and barrels have a produced a fantastic analysis of the opposition to peds, and how these espoused rationales fit with currently understood paradigms and constructs. as always, readers are directed to the full text; even more so considering my expertise is not within the psychological domain. in any case, the findings of the studies presented are crucial and necessary to continue the discussion around performance enhancing drugs.

without describing the study methodology in detail, the authors essentially presented a scenario to a participant, in which a fictional character, joe, was said to be using steroids. researchers used a number of surveys with alterations in the nature of the scenario described to the participant, in an effort to understand, for the first time in the context of peds, comparisons between explantations of “wrongness”. in short, the explanations for opposition to peds that were explored were: laws and rules, prudence, punishment, naturalness, interfering with the body, competitive context, athletes as role models, fairness to past competitors, and terminology. for example, in order to test for the degree that prudence, or the willingness to account for potential harms to the athlete, a sentence was included to the end of the fictional scenario that stated: “the steroid he decides to start using, like most steroids, has potential side effects, and poses some threat to joe’s health.” subjects were recruited through online means and all resided in the united states.

for a full understanding of the results of the studies, readers are highly encouraged to review the full-text. however, the large take away from this paper were that three domains were consistently highlighted as contributing to the degree of perceived wrongness in ped use. unsurprisingly, a driving factor was the domain of fairness, such that when peds were described as providing an advantage over an opponent, their use were perceived as more wrong. in concert with fairness, the authors also found that laws or rules, and prudence were also able to explain a significant degree of wrongness. as the authors note in the paper, this may be one of relatively few explored cases, where explanations for perceiving the degree of wrongness simultaneously reaches across domains, instead of being isolated to a single rationale.

although the authors of this paper were clear to acknowledge the limitations of this study, in particular its exploratory nature, there are some key insights that should be gleaned. in sum, public perceptions of ped use seems to be formed by a number of potential areas of concern. considering only the three components highlighted in this paper, if we are to shape public opinion on ped use, and by extension, the incidence of use, we must be more diligent in highlighting various fairness, health and safety, and legal concerns. it is my opinion that the health component in particular is currently underserved by regular media sources. not in the sense that the safety of peds are not covered or discussed; in actuality it is to the contrary, and the health concerns described are often hyperbolic, rare, and overblown. this potentially obfuscates the issue at hand, since a future ped user may contrast this with associates whom have used peds and suffered no observable health consequences. to this end, we must be more honest about the potential health risks and associated with some peds, instead of encouraging a form of diluted scaremongering, as is regrettably a common feature of current media.

in review, this paper is worth reading and pondering. considering a future direction, a study of similar structure and form conducted within an athletic population, including those who may have engaged in , or had the opportunity to engage in, ped use, would be a fascinating contrast to the present findings. would the degree of wrongness be influence by dissimilar domains in athletes compared to the general public? if so, how might this inform differential strategies between public and athlete education programs? keep watching this space!

get engaged with the conversation on twitter and make sure to subscribe to our mailing list to stay up to date on the latests posts.

reference

landy, justin f., daniel k. walco, and daniel m. bartels. “what’s wrong with using steroids? exploring whether and why people oppose the use of performance enhancing drugs." (2017).