Psychology of sports cheating/doping

[anaklio]

A new review on this topic was just published by Ehrnborg and Rosén (2009). Here's a nice summary of their paper.

Drugs and methods to improve physical performance among athletes have been used since the beginning of sport history, but the use of performance enhancing drugs has not always been regarded as cheating. In short, the motives for doping are improving and maintaining physical functioning, coping with the social/psychological pressures and striving for social and psychological goals, including economic benefits. Factors such as, "doping dilemma", "win at all costs", cost versus benefit, and the specificity of some specific doping agents, also play major roles. It seems that action on the athletes' attitude about the achievement of physical improvement and creating effective methods to reveal the drug abuse, are two main ways in winning the struggle against doping.

To me, the economic factors loom large. The steroids users in baseball prove that you can make large amounts of money by cheating. And when you are caught, you don't lose much of this money. Thus I think that the problem will continue.