Teaching athletes about morality in sport can help reduce doping

Elite athletes can be persuaded not to take banned substances - either by appealing to their sense of morality or educating them about the risks of using performance-enhancing drugs, according to a new study. Researchers developed two separate intervention programmes - one targeting moral factors associated with doping likelihood, the other introducing doping and providing information about the health consequences of banned substances and the risks of sport supplements. They tested both programmes on young elite athletes from the UK and Greece, finding that both approaches were equally effective at deterring the sportspeople from taking banned substances over a six-month period. Led by sports science experts at the University of Birmingham and funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the international research group's findings are published today in Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. Dr Maria Kavussanu , from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham, commented: "We must take action to reduce doping in sport -evidence suggests that banned substances are being used at alarming levels, particularly among elite athletes, where over 50% of competitors may be using these drugs based on some estimates. "Our research group is the first to develop and evaluate an intervention focussing on moral variables and compare it with an educational intervention of equal duration.