Targeting personal morality in anti-doping education

In July 2021, US 100-m sprinter, Sha'Carri Richardson failed a drug test for taking the prohibited substance marijuana prior to the US Olympic trials. While Richardson mentioned that she did not use marijuana to enhance her performance but to help her mentally cope after the death of her mother, according to the World Anti-Doping Code, Richardson had taken a prohibited substance and was de-facto banned from competing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. As a result, the incident caused a divide in both the sporting and non-sporting community of whether she should be allowed to compete at the Olympic Games. Stories such as Richards’ case are common in sport, where athletes’ failing anti-doping rule violations permeate the media. We immediately have feelings about such stories when we see them, and often make judgements of approval and reproach. Some of us ask the question “what would I have done in her place”? In a quest for understanding the foundational principles of human moral cognition, sport psychologists have done exactly this: asked athletes to decide whether they would take a performance enhancing substance. This research has shed light on several moral variables that play a role in an athletes’ decisions to dope. In this article, I will provide an overview of three moral variables that have shown to influence an athlete’s decision to dope, namely moral identity, moral emotion, and moral disengagement, and highlight the ways in which anti-doping practitioners can target these to help athletes make more informed decisions towards the use of prohibited substances.