Perfectionism and doping willingness in athletes: The mediating role of moral disengagement.

Although trait perfectionism has been related to doping attitudes in athletes, research investigating variables that could account for relationships between perfectionism and doping outcomes has received scant attention. Consequently, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether perfectionism was related to doping willingness directly, and indirectly via moral disengagement. We recruited a sample of 204 student athletes (M age = 19.12 years, SD = 1.17, n = 81 females - 39.70%) who completed measures of perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, doping moral disengagement, and doping willingness. Multiple regression analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between perfectionistic concerns and doping willingness (β = .13, p < .05) and a nonsignificant relationship between perfectionistic strivings and doping willingness (β = -.01, p > .05). Moreover, bias-corrected bootstrapped indirect effects revealed that doping moral disengagement mediated the relationship between perfectionistic concerns and doping willingness (ab = .12; 95% CI = 0.02 to 0.21). The findings suggest that the relationship between perfectionistic concerns and doping extends beyond attitudes - to doping willingness - and the propensity to morally disengage explains why this is the case.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of competing interest Given their role as an Editorial Board Member, Backhouse S.H. had no involvement in the peer-review of this article and had no access to information regarding its peer-review. All other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.