Implicit versus explicit attitude to doping: Which better predicts athletes’ vigilance towards unintentional doping?

Abstract

Objectives

This preliminary study examined whether implicit doping attitude, explicit doping attitude, or both, predicted athletes’ vigilance towards unintentional doping.

Design

A cross-sectional correlational design.

Methods

Australian athletes (N = 143; M_age = 18.13, SD = 4.63) completed measures of implicit doping attitude (brief single-category implicit association test), explicit doping attitude (Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale), avoidance of unintentional doping (Self-Reported Treatment Adherence Scale), and behavioural vigilance task of unintentional doping (reading the ingredients of an unfamiliar food product).

Results

Positive implicit doping attitude and explicit doping attitude were negatively related to athletes’ likelihood of reading the ingredients table of an unfamiliar food product, and positively related to athletes’ vigilance towards unintentional doping. Neither attitude measures predicted avoidance of unintentional doping. Overall, the magnitude of associations by implicit doping attitude appeared to be stronger than that of explicit doping attitude.

Conclusions

Athletes with positive implicit and explicit doping attitudes were less likely to read the ingredients table of an unknown food product, but were more likely to be aware of the possible presence of banned substances in a certain food product. Implicit doping attitude appeared to explain athletes’ behavioural response to the avoidance of unintentional doping beyond variance explained by explicit doping attitude.

Introduction

Doping is prohibited in sport because it contravenes rules and is against the spirit of fair play. The World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA) strict liability policy states that doping is a violation, regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional. Athletes found guilty of doping in sport are often blamed for their intention to cheat by illegally enhancing their sport performance.¹ Of course, intentional doping does occur and anti-doping procedures are geared towards identifying and sanctioning cheats, but research also indicates that athletes can dope accidentally if they unintentionally or unwittingly take banned substances through the form of food/drink, medication, and/or nutritional supplements.¹ Accordingly, athletes and their entourage (e.g., trainers, coaches, managers, and parents) need to be vigilant in ensuring that the foods or substances consumed by the athletes do not contain ingredients that are prohibited in sport. The issue of unintentional doping is increasingly complex given that athletes often feign unintentional doping as a mitigating circumstance for failing a doping test. Psychological research on doping has tended to assume that doping is intentional, and has neglected the potential for unintentional doping and the psychological factors that may determine its occurrence.2, 3, 4 The present study examined whether athletes’ attitude towards doping, measured both explicitly and implicitly,⁵ predicted athletes’ awareness of unintentional doping, as well as behaviours in relation to the avoidance of such doping.

In recent research, attempts have been made to understand factors that help athletes to prevent unwitting consumption of banned performance-enhancing substances. To date, research has identified a number of psychological factors (e.g., self-control, motivation) that have been shown to align with athletes’ intended or actual participation in behaviours related to vigilance in avoiding unintentional doping (e.g., avoid taking or consuming unfamiliar food/drink/supplement products, reading the ingredients table of unfamiliar foods and supplements, being aware of the presence of banned performance-enhancing substances in unfamiliar foods and supplements).4, 6, 7 Studies have also indicated that individuals who hold positive beliefs with respect to the avoidance of unintentional doping (i.e., perceiving that the avoidance of doping is good for sport, morality, career, and health) are more likely to report intentions to prevent unintentional doping.⁷ Although positive doping attitudes have consistently been shown to be a direct or indirect positive predictor of athletes’ intention to dope8, 9 and actual use of banned performance-enhancing substances,¹⁰ a negative association between doping attitude and behaviours related to the avoidance of unintentional doping cannot be assumed. For example, athletes may express positive attitudes towards doping avoidance in self-report surveys but actually harbour positive attitudes for doping. This is because expressing positive attitudes towards doping is likely to be considered undesirable and socially unacceptable. As a consequence, athletes may explicitly express negative doping attitudes, but covertly hold positive attitudes. Such opposing attitudes have also been identified in other domains whereby overt expression of attitudes is considered distasteful or socially unacceptable, such as sexism or racism.11, 12 Researchers in these domains, including doping, have therefore employed measures to assess implicit attitudes as a means to identify covertly-held attitudes and test their differential prediction of behavioural outcomes alongside explicit measures from self-report questionnaires. The importance of investigating athletes’ doping attitude by both implicit measures and explicit measures is that implicit measures capture an athlete’s automatic evaluation, whereas explicit measures reflect responses associated with conscious self-reflection.13, 14

Although studies on intentional doping in sport have included both explicit10, 15, 16 and implicit17, 18, 19 measures of attitudes towards doping, there is a relative dearth of research examining these attitudes in relation to unintentional doping. Specifically, the predictive validity of implicit and explicit doping attitudes towards unintentional doping has not been fully explored in terms of awareness of unintentional doping and pertinent behaviours related to the avoidance of unintentional doping. The aim of the present study was to examine the predictive validity of implicit doping attitude and explicit doping attitude on athletes’ behaviours related to the avoidance of unintentional doping. An implicit association test (IAT) was used to measure athletes’ implicit doping attitude in the current study. The IAT is a timed sorting task aimed at measuring the relative strength of associations between a stimuli (i.e. doping) and superordinate categories (i.e. good/bad) via participants’ reaction times. Naturally, a faster reaction time would signify a stronger relative association between the categories. IAT measures have been widely used in social and health psychology to measure individuals’ implicit attitude towards numerous sensitive issues, such as prejudice and racial bias.11, 12, 20 Recently, the IAT has been adopted and modified to measure athletes’ implicit attitudes towards doping,18, 21, 22 and is believed to be an objective assessment method less susceptible, but not completely free from, socially desirable responses or “faking” responses compared to traditional self-report explicit measures.5, 14 Prior research has demonstrated that athletes who have previously engaged in doping14, 18, 22 through the use of nutritional supplements,¹⁴ and those who supported the legalization of doping in sport,¹³ reported greater positive implicit doping attitudes relative to those who did not.13, 18 However, the predictive power of implicit attitudes towards athletes’ actual doping behaviour, or, their behaviour in the avoidance of unintentional doping, has not yet been fully scrutinised. Additionally, scores on previous studies that use the implicit attitude tests to measure implicit attitude towards doping, such as the full-version IAT13, 17 or the brief-IAT,14, 18, 22 could be a confounding factor as the response latency (i.e., the interference/difference IAT-score for doping attitude) is computed by comparing reaction time of doping-related stimuli against responses towards a reference category, such as nutritional supplements14, 17, 18 or non-doping words (e.g., ‘clean’, ‘natural’).²² However, it has been proposed that nutritional supplements (or even non-doping words) may not necessarily be the correct reference category, and furthermore, it has been proposed that there is not a clear definitive opposing category to ‘doping substances’.¹⁷ To resolve this problem, researchers in social psychology have advocated the use of the single-category IAT,²³ in which response latency is computed by comparing the reaction-time between the focal (‘doping’ and ‘I like’) and non-focal (e.g., ‘doping’ and ‘I dislike’) blocks. As such, no reference category is needed,²³ making the single-category IAT preferable over traditional IAT in the context of assessing implicit attitudes towards doping. In this study, we introduce a single-category brief-IAT to measure implicit attitude towards doping. Moreover, we evaluate its predictive power on athletes’ vigilance towards unintentional doping against that of a traditional measure of explicit attitude towards doping. Based on prior research of the relationship between doping attitude and athletes’ behavioural responses to doping10, 16, 24 as well as the avoidance of doping,6, 7 we hypothesised that (1) athletes’ positive implicit and explicit doping attitudes are negatively associated with; behaviours relating to their vigilance towards unintentional doping (e.g., reading the ingredients table of food products, being aware of the risk of unintentional doping prior to consumption, refusal to take or eat suspicious food products,) and to self-reported behavioural adherence to unintentional doping avoidance behaviours. Furthermore, (2) athletes’ implicit doping attitude is expected to explain unique variance of the behavioural outcomes related to the avoidance of unintentional doping beyond that of explicit doping attitude.