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If rules were meant to be broken, why does cheating feel so bad?
Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles said, “I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating.”
Still, an intense desire to win obviously exists in nearly every competitive-level athlete, to the extent that professionals often sacrifice mental, emotional, and physical well-being to reach their goals.
Where do athletes draw the line between intense sacrifice and a borderline unhealthy obsession with winning?
How truly important is winning to you?
The Goldman Dilemma
From 1982 to 1995, physician Robert Goldman surveyed a number of elite athletes, asking them an ethical scenario involving performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).
The dilemma was this: would you take a magic pill that would guarantee an Olympic gold medal, but would also guarantee death five years later?
Goldman reported that more than 50% of the athletes answered yes to the dilemma. I know, I know, I raised my eyebrows when I first saw this number too.
This is an interesting example of a Faustian bargain – an ethical dilemma from medieval folklore where a man named Faust makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul in exchange for worldly knowledge and power.
This exchange is intriguing for a few reasons.
First, it involves trading in something internal (soul, life) for something external (worldly knowledge and power, Olympic gold medal).
Second, the subject is usually forced to choose between well-being in the present or in the future.
You see, Faustian exchanges can be like credit cards – they seem great in the moment, but eventually you’re going to pay the price.
Problems With the Dilemma
Before we run with that 50% statistic, it’s important to first point out some problems with the original dilemma.
A 2013 Australian study from Connor, Woolf & Mazanov was very critical of Goldman’s process and reported findings. The researchers outlined a handful of problems with the wording of the dilemma itself, as well as the way that Goldman gathered the data before publishing the results.
First, Goldman did not have a recruitment plan, and instead asked the dilemma question to elite athletes at various events or training sessions bi-annually for more than ten years.
This is a problem because the lack of structure leaves room for outside influence from the interviewer, the interviewee and the environment, leading to skewed results.
Second, there is a potential for positivity bias because of the wording of the dilemma (take a pill, win an Olympic gold, die five years later). Athletes may have been more likely to answer yes because of the sequence of events in the question, again leading to more skewed results.
Lastly, it is important to consider that cultural and social norms shape the population’s opinion on PED use in sports. The public perception of PEDs is dynamic, and has changed considerably from the 1980s to the 2010s, and Goldman’s findings may not apply to the cultural landscape in sports today.
Also, if PEDs are so taboo, what are the odds of getting truly honest answers from athletes about whether or not they would take them?
Going even deeper, besides being honest with an interviewer, what are the odds of athletes being honest with themselves about this dilemma?
Goldman Dilemma: Updated
The Australian researchers re-tested the original dilemma, improving measures for more valid and reliable results, and found that only about 1% of athletes would accept the deal.
But wait, it gets better.
Where it starts to get really interesting is that only about 10% of surveyed athletes said they would accept the exchange under two different conditions: a) the drug was not illegal, and b) there was no early death for taking the drug.
If the drug isn’t illegal and there are no negative effects on one’s health, why did only a fraction of the athletes accept the new deal?
Remind me, why is it bad to do PEDs again?
Anti-doping advocates usually present two arguments against the use of PEDs in sports: a) they are dangerous to one’s health, and b) they are banned substances, and taking them crosses the ethical line between fair play and cheating.
The ethical reason far outweighs the health risk reason, as steroids and hormones are used safely and routinely in hospital and other healthcare settings, and it is more so the abuse and misuse that result in negative health outcomes.
So, that leaves us with the ethical reason: cheating is bad, cheating will make you feel bad, and people will think poorly of you for cheating.
Case closed, right?
Why is it, then, that still only 10% of athletes in the follow-up study said they would take the magic pill with these new conditions?
Process-Oriented vs Result-Oriented
One intriguing explanation could be to look at how the athletes are motivated.
Athletes typically fall into one of two categories: process-oriented or result-oriented, and besides their different effects on learning, they may play a part in explaining why some athletes choose to use PEDs.
Process-oriented athletes enjoy and value the journey towards a goal as much as the goal itself. These athletes feel as though they benefit from the process of working towards an outcome, and whether they accomplish their goal or not is secondary.
Result-oriented athletes place the brunt of the emphasis on the outcome of the goal, not seeing a lot of benefit from the process if the goal is not achieved.
Could it be that the 90% of athletes who still refused to take the magic pill in exchange for an Olympic gold medal were more process oriented than the 10% who said yes?
It could be that the process-oriented athletes saw more value in the journey to Olympic gold than they did in actually winning the medal.
Maybe the athlete who is using PEDs is missing the point: the process of struggling, doubting, failing, and continuing to persevere, is where real growth happens.
Skipping the line and avoiding the true process of honestly working towards a goal is a Faustian exchange in itself: get an Olympic gold medal but miss out on the person you could have become if you had chosen to take the hard road instead.
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