[MUSIC] [FOREIGN] >> So in the earlier video about the link between addiction and personality, we realize that practicing sports exposes one to risks, significant risks. And it's very difficult to imagine or believe that all athletes hve this level of risk and use substances. So aside from the approaches which are focused on the development of identity, in particular in adolescence. What do we actually actually know about the links between the actual practice of sports at a competitive level and doping? Are there factors that are going to favor this use? Well, there's a whole series, a set of research. We call them cognitivist research, on this particular subject. And they attempt to understand how athletes in these competitive situations, or situations where the offer of a substance is going to come, how they are going to face this. So this cognitivist research program is based on a basic principle, that basic principle underlies all of the research. And it's based on a comparison of pros and cons. In other words, an athlete is considered to be a calculating entity who is going to weigh the pros and the cons. And they're going to look for the factors that show that the decision goes towards favoring it, and not favoring it. There are several models that we have, some have been tested, others will be tested. But globally, on this research, we come up with key factors that cut across all of these factors. And they help us to understand what the tipping point is. And how an athlete can decide to use, or decide not to use, a particular substance. So there are three key factors that have been identified. The first one is the morality of the athlete, the personal morals, the moral judgement that an athlete has about to use of a prohibited substance and its emotional impact. That is a key factor. It's a deterrent certainly, and it can of course incite as well. The second one is opinions or views of reference groups, that has a very important impact, coming from the people who are around the athletes. They play a role, sort of a protective cocoon, but it can also go the other way. And it can encourage them to use substance and this is why we started to look closely at this entourage, if you will, of athletes. The third one Is the perception of whether it is legitimate or not to use a particular substance. In other words, the reasons why certain substances can be used, should be used. And these three factors play a very important role in the construction of a positive or negative attitude, vis-a-vis, doping. And decided it can actually be assessed, it can be measured, there's a scale implicit. There's a scale, and we consider that in this research, the way in which this attitude is established or created. Centered, more or less, on these different factors on the one hand. Or on the other, that's the best way of predicting the intention of using substances. In other words, if the question is, what is it that causes an athlete to go one way or the other, it is basically this attitude. The attitude that is determined by the three factors that I mentioned earlier. So, this means that we go back to the model at the very beginning, in other words, that they are calculating but not necessarily cheating. They're calculating and assessing. But what's interesting is that you talk about morality, I noted that. The moral approach, but how do these athletes justify circumventing the rules? Because today, they are very clear, very explicit. Nobody can ignore them. They're reminded about these rules all the time. Is it possible today, to justify morally such an attitude? Well that's the crux of the matter, it's the moral justification that we have to look at. If the rules are there, what ways in a person's approaches the way they use. That's the difference between knowing the rules and using them, or representing them for oneself. There's a real problem when it comes to this morality, and that is guilt. The guilt that some people feel, there's double guilt. There's a guilt, vis-a-vis oneself, how can I justify myself, when I look in the mirror and I'm using substances? So there's that guilt, but then there's also social guilt that weighs in on this. In other words, how are others going to judge me or assess what I do? Especially those who are close to me. So, some research shows that indeed athletes use these strategies to justify this use of substances. And we say that more justification then helps to disengage them from reality, in fact, from this reality. It's their psychic reality. And to establish it, to avoid having this feeling of guilt, they justify it. There are different ways of justifying things. I can mention for example, the moral justification, that's one. Moral justification is athletes who use substances and they say they have to use the substances, because that is what's going to make it possible for them to perform. So there's a moral justification for using substances. And then there's another justification which is often used, and it's called the euphemistic labeling. In other words, you change the name, you don't say you're taking drugs, you talk about stuff, you're taking stuff. I mentioned the Belgian mixture. So you change the word. And by changing the word you attenuate, you lower the level of guilt that one might feel, vis-a-vis the nature of the substances that are being used. And then there is the comparison approach that athletes use. Athletes say, it's better to do sports but taking substances, than to have a sedentary life and just eat potato chips. Which is clear from a psychic point of view. And then another thing which is often used is the responsibility shift, often in judicial situations. Where they say that they're not in control of their consumption or use. I am the subject of manipulation. I am under pressure to do this. If I don't do it then I'm thrown out of the system. And then another one, another mechanism often used, is the mechanism involving distortion of consequences. For a while, So for example we analyzed the calls we were receiving. We had writers who called in, and were saying that they were using substances, but they were obliged to use them because otherwise they were injured, they could be injured. And the consequence was to protect themselves from the specific nature of the sport they were practicing, protect themselves from injuries. So they find all sorts of psychic and rational reasons, justifications, which allows them to reduce the level of guilt that they might feel vis-a-vis the use of these substances. So we can see that people want to maintain their health taking substances, so these attitudes change. They're associated with morality, but also to reference groups, and the question of whether the use is legitimate, that can change as well. Can you give us some elements that would help us understand the existence of what the actual strategy is and are there stages in this strategy and in the way things develop? Well, there's not much research, it's still an open field. Probably because it's very difficult to carry out this sort of research because you have to be able to track the career of an athlete. And research is done on groups at a particular time, at a particular time one can measure the moral disengagement measures attitudes, vis-a-vis, doping. It's difficult to do it over time. Some research has been done which was carried out with my colleague, Jean. Retroactively, we compared two groups of athletes, one group had taken substances and the other were substance free and we reconstructed their careers. And the few factors came out of this which would help to predict where things go. So, there's early specialization, which we talked about earlier, and this early specialization associated with exclusive focusing on sport. We noticed that these athletes were athletes who had left school very early, they were focused exclusively on their performance on sports. High performance, achieving high performance. They weren't taking dope. They weren't doping themselves at the time, but they were very young. We also observed that these athletes also in life had run into a number of difficult situations over and over again. Everyone does but what was special about this group is they had trouble finding solutions to their difficulties they faced. In other words there was an accumulation factor and this weighed on the way in which they developed as athletes. They all used substances to enhance their performance. Not necessarily prohibitive ones, but they were taking proteins, they were taking vitamins, everything that can support performance. And everything was happening as if there was a number of factors that predicted that somebody could tip over into a situation where they would take substances. As if there was a precarious balance and at one point, it headed towards doping because there was an effect of accumulation during the career. And when a key point was reached in the career, then all of a sudden, they took a turn towards doping. What we also noted was that some athletes were not going towards doping but they stopped their career instead. So there's an interesting dynamic there which says that there is instability. This instability has to find sort of an outlet somewhere and doping is one of those outlets, it's attractive as an outlet. What we should also add is that in the final analysis, all this is of the tipping one way or another can be avoided. These athletes were having problems. If they had been followed closely, they wouldn't have tipped over into doping, on to the doping side. The other thing that is really important is to stress the importance of the use of substances during their lives, vitamins and so on. For some of them, at least some research is going in that direction where they consider that these are gateways, that's the gateway theory. Increasingly, people say that those who use a lot of these diet supplements, can move in the direction of doping. And so, if people take vitamin C for example, then they might take something else. Yes, because it's become trivialized. Now, you're talking about these dietary supplements, and these doping substances, so we see possible links there. Couldn't we think in terms of different usages of these substances. Taking vitamin C without consequences, or without heading towards other substances. Could there be different uses, different repercussions? What happens around this kind of use? Very interesting point. Very interesting question because a lot of research is telling us that an athlete will take substances or not. There's this dichotomy in other words, either they're doping or not doping. Whereas when you look more into details you can see the different ways of using the substances. And here, once again, there is very little research because you have to have access to the situations which provide the information. It is very complicated to do that. I published some research in 2015 which identifies a number of uses, different usages. For example, we see one use which reduces the difficulties which they face. And that is the use of the athlete who takes the substance to have fewer problems. But when they do this the difficulty it's as if they were raising the degree of freedom because freedom is a limitation. When there are too many possibilities, one doesn't know what to do. And when you take substances, it makes things more easy. So they take substances without even thinking about this, about it. It's done through somebody. There's influence sometimes. But the use there is the use of a substance without thinking about it. It's a use that reduces the degree of freedom and that facilities this sort of action very much. In terms of the constraints, it makes the world easier if you wish. No questions asked, take the substance and then you feel free. You, the subject, will feel free as a result. Then there are other types that we have noticed. We have the situation where the athletes are just trying them out, trying substances. What's the effect of such and such a substance? But they don't have the. This idea that they would want to continue or they're not calculating in this way. Or it could be that they try it out just to fix. For example, if they have an injury or something like that, they say let's try this, maybe it'll help. So the model is experimental science on one's self, yes. But they're researchers, also the athletes do this, sometimes do research. They're interested in a particular substance and since there's very low probability that they might be apprehended or caught. Just like they look for techniques for training, they might seek a particular substance and say let's take this and see. Everything, risk is under control, because I'm not going to do this over a long period. So it's just trying things out, which is very different from the first case where they're simply not thinking. Next, there is an optimization use and that is mass doping where one takes the substance with a very specific target in mind, a certain amount of time. It's the most typical one, I think, and the last one is compensatory where they are compensating the negative effects of other substances. So you take a stimulant and then you have take a sedative to be able to sleep because you took stimulants. It's a sort of pharmacopeia, which is extraordinary, because they're trying to compensate the negative effects of something. Bodybuilders know this very well, because they have very extensive pharmacopeia. They take certain substances to attenuate the effects of what anabolic steroids do to their skin, for example, and this compensation is something that we see also in athletes other than the bodybuilders. >> Thank you. Now after this wide description, this panoramic view, we can see the very interesting aspects of what you've just described. Could you tell us by way of a conclusion, what can you tell us to conclude this extremely dense, this wealth of information you've just provided us. >> One has to conclude and one has to try to see what the relationships between all these factors are. I think that psychology gives us three approaches to dealing with the psyche of athletes vis-a-vis doping. First of all, the Id the self-image, their attitude. The different levels of measuring the self and then also the image they have or themselves. Then there would be an approach which would involve action. Action being that the psyche is always in a specific context, in a specific activity carried out by the athlete, which cannot be compared with somebody who is not an athlete, a worker carrying out a different activity. Among all the sports, there are differences as well between the various sports, so with these three levels of analysis, I think they complement one another. And I think that there's enough material here to have a fairly good understanding of these psychological mechanisms which are associated with doping. Perhaps, I can also say that I regret very much the impact of this research on prevention. I didn't mention research which deals with the psychological analysis of the effects that this might have and that the use of this research and the research that I just mentioned is hardly used in supporting athletes and finding systems. And we complain that there are young athletes who are trapped in the tests and we say, where's the prevention? Why don't we develop more prevention? I do regret this every much that not more is done in terms of the development of prevention. Thank you very much. [MUSIC]
