This article examines whether a training program in ethical decision making can change young athletes’ doping attitudes. Fifty-two young elite athletes were randomly assigned to either an ethical decision-making training group or a standard-knowledge-based educational program group. Another 17 young elite athletes were recruited for no-treatment control purposes. The ethical decision-making training comprised six 30-min online sessions in which the participants had to work through 18 ethical dilemmas related to doping. The standard-knowledge-based educational program was also conducted in six online (...) sessions of comparable length to that of the ethical training. A short version of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale was administered to measure the effects of the trainings on doping attitude. Prior to as well as after the intervention, the mean doping attitude scores of the young athletes were low to very low, indicating vehement rejections of doping. The results of our experiment showed that the ethical training led to an attenuation of these rejections. No intervention effect was found in the standard education group. The observed slight increase in the doping attitude score could be an indication that the ethical decision-making training was successful in breaking up the athletes’ stereotypical style of reasoning about doping. (shrink)

Because doping is becoming more and more of a problem in elite sports, anti-doping and prevention programs are receiving more attention. However, current doping prevention programs that primarily involve pedagogical education in youths have not been shown to be very effective. In sports philosophy there is a discourse about ethics and morality in sports in connection with doping. So far, however, the aspect of ethics has been neglected in anti-doping prevention programs. This article discusses a new approach to doping prevention (...) for young athletes and a way to improve conventional doping prevention by focusing on the process of decision-making. The article argues that ethical decision-making programs based on ethical training programs developed in business offer a large potential for prevention programs in sport. The article concludes with a presentation of training possibilities for ethical decision-making in connection with doping. (shrink)

Involvement in sport and exercise not only provides participants with health benefits but can be an important aspect of living a meaningful life. The COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary cessation of public life in March/April/May 2020 came with restrictions, which probably also made it difficult, if not impossible, to participate in certain types of sport or exercise. Following the philosophical position that different types of sport and exercise offer different ways of “relating to the world,” this study explored continuity in (...) the type of sport and exercise people practiced during the pandemic-related lockdown, and possible effects on mood. Data from a survey of 601 adult exercisers, collected shortly after the COVID-19 outbreak in Finland, were analyzed. Approximately one third of the participants changed their “worldmaking” and shifted to “I–Nature”-type activities. We observed worse mood during the pandemic in those who shifted from “I–Me,” compared to those who had preferred the “I–Nature” relation already before the pandemic and thus experienced continuity. The clouded mood of those experiencing discontinuity may be the result of a temporary loss of “feeling at home” in their new exercise life-world. However, further empirical investigation must follow, because the observed effect sizes were small. (shrink)