The Psychology of Cheating in Sports
Posted August 16, 2019 by Aurora
There’s a long history of athletes who have cheated. The examples are so rampant that it’s difficult to even summarize the presence of cheating in sports.
Three of the major American professional sports have been impacted. Major League Baseball saw the Black Sox Scandal in the early part of the 20th century, and in the later part of the century, doping literally altered record books. National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy was investigated by the FBI for betting on games that he officiated. Perhaps most recognizable to sports fans may be the National Football League’s controversy “Deflategate,” in which quarterback Tom Brady allegedly ordered deflated footballs used in the 2014-15 playoffs.
Cheating also extends to other sports, of course. In an infamous example, Soviet athlete Boris Onishchenko was banned for life from sports after he was caught electrically wiring his fencing weapon to go off at will in the 1976 Summer Olympics. Even more infamous was Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal, which stripped the cyclist of multiple achievements, including seven Tour de France titles.
Few people question whether cheating has impacted sports. But why have there been so many examples? What exactly causes athletes to cheat? This article takes a brief look at the psychology of cheating in sports.
Key Factors in the Psychology of Cheating in Sports
Who do people cheat in sports? Psychological research has provided insight into the sheer competitive nature of sports and the ethical complications of cheating. Those two factors offer perspective into why athletes are willing to cheat.
Emphasis on Winning
It might be an understatement to say that sports can be “competitive.” In fact, sports can be an important part of culture, according to Howard Giles in “The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication.” For instance, in the words of a cultural historian Jacques Barzun, which are inscribed in the Baseball Hall of Fame, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”
Giles described how people “live in a globalized, sports-saturated world” that can put cultures and their values on display. Sports can also change the way that more specific groups interact and find their identity, including athletes, coaches, teams, and fans. Fans can be so involved that they have pregame anxiety and emotional experiences during games. They may even, without reason, blame losses on biased officiating (which can actually explain home field advantage ) or cheating.
The stakes are high, and that’s especially the case at professional levels of sport. Winning is a necessary ingredient in the pursuit of excellence, and, as a result, athletes can take that further than others might. It’s reminiscent of the cliché that “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
“Competitive sport often places individuals in conflicting situations that emphasize winning over sportsperson-ship and fair play,” according to the “Handbook of Sports Psychology.” “It would be wrong, however, to attribute this to the competitive nature of sport.” There are other factors at play. The next topic works hand-in-hand with the emphasis on winning to explain how athletes may turn to cheating.
The Ego and Moral Functioning
The concept of achievement goals is linked to potential cheating in sports. In task- and ego-oriented goals, there’s a fundamental difference in how athletes think of themselves and why they compete. Task-oriented athletes focus on hard work and self-development, while ego-oriented athletes are focused on being better than everyone else and believe skill to be a matter of innate ability.
According to the “Handbook of Sports Psychology,” studies have demonstrated relationships between task and ego orientations with sportsmanship and moral functioning. Compared to high task-oriented athletes, research points to how high ego-oriented athletes have lower sportsmanship, more self-reported cheating, and endorsement of cheating. Ego orientation can predict lower moral functioning.
Moral functioning can even take an unexpected turn with some sports cheaters. From research in Attitudes and Social Cognition , the notion that cheaters feel guilty after engaging in unethical behavior simply isn’t true. Over six experiments, unethical behaviors not only failed to trigger negative affect, but they triggered positive affect. Those types of behaviors can lead to a “cheater’s high.”
“These findings challenge existing models of ethical decision-making and offer cause for concern,” the study’s authors said. “Many ethical decisions are made privately and are difficult to monitor. Individuals who recognize, perhaps from experience, that they can derive both material and psychological rewards from engaging in unethical behavior may be powerfully motivated to behave unethically.”
Why Do People Cheat in Sports?
The psychology of cheating in sports is a complicated topic, and researchers are learning more about what drives people to violate the rules, use performance-enhancing drugs, or take part in some other method of cheating. However, the fundamental reason why people cheat in sports isn’t complex at all.
Athletes want to win. At the highest levels of sports, the difference between first and second place is often millions of dollars and a significant amount of fame. As a result, some athletes may believe winning really is the only thing. To them, the risk of getting caught and being labeled a cheater is worth the money and glory that being the best brings.
Ask Lance Armstrong. He lost everything, it may appear, after being stripped of his achievements and experiencing costly legal battles. Armstrong told USA Today that he had paid more than $100 million in legal costs, and that came before he settled a $100 million lawsuit with the federal government for just $5 million. However, even those numbers may be significantly lower than what cheating allowed him to win. According to Bloomberg in 2013, Armstrong’s riches totaled more than $218 million . At the peak of his career, he earned $28 million a year, Forbes estimated.
Was it worth it? In a BBC interview , Lance Armstrong said that if it was still 1995, he would “probably do it again.”
If you’re interested in the psychology of cheating in sports, you can learn more about sports psychology by earning your online MS in Exercise Science . You’ll receive a strong foundation in topics like exercise physiology and sports nutrition as well. Aurora University Online’s program offers two specializations in sports performance and clinical exercise. And through additional coursework and an internship or capstone experience, you’ll be prepared for either of the following industry-leading certification exams:
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Every thesis statement has three parts: a topic, a focus and an opinion. Your thesis is also dependent on what the assignment is and how long it is. I'm going to assume it's for a standard one to ...
In Study 1, we used a cross-sectional design to examine whether moral identity was related to cheating attitudes in sport directly and indirectly via anticipated regret. We tested two hypotheses. First, we hypothesised that moral identity and anticipated regret would be negatively associated with cheating attitudes.
According to the "Handbook of Sports Psychology," studies have demonstrated relationships between task and ego orientations with sportsmanship and moral functioning. Compared to high task-oriented athletes, research points to how high ego-oriented athletes have lower sportsmanship, more self-reported cheating, and endorsement of cheating.
I argue that the question whether cheating can be prohibited in sports is empirical rather than analytic, as is the case for games subject to the thesis. Thus, sports rules do not make cheating impossible and since game officials cannot always detect cheating and punish cheaters, cheating is a part of sports and cheaters sometimes win.
• write a thesis statement and supporting arguments that logically align • revise a thesis statement so that it aligns with existing supporting arguments PART 1: ARGUABLE THESES VERSUS STATEMENTS OF FACT In Parts 2 and 3 of this lesson, you will explore two different approaches you can use to write a thesis statement.
I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Deborah A. G. Smith entitled "The Honor Statement and Student Attitudes Towards Cheating at the University of Tennessee." 1 have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Sport, psychiatry, cheating, ethics, performance enhancing drugs, psychotherapeutic management History Received 21 May 2015 Accepted 23 June 2015 ... dishonesty. The cheater believes deep down that he or she is entitled to lie to get what he or she wants, that is, to win. The foundation of the personality is set in childhood, often with a need to
For academic dishonesty type, we used two different classification methods: exam cheating versus all other cheating, as well as individual cheating versus collaborative cheating. First, we coded academic dishonesty type into two levels: cheating on some form of test (k = 6), and cheating on homework or other assignments (k = 2). Thirty studies ...
Dishonesty Cheating in sports 5. Community Volunteerism 6. Television Reality shows 7. Family Eating together 8. Criminal justice Treatment of inmates ... Write an arguable thesis statement for each group of words in the "Narrower Topic" column. Thesis Writing Exercise 3 Write two (2) arguable thesis statements, each with at least three (3 ...
Thesis Statement for Cheating in Sports - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free.
number of integrity related statements in the syllabus and attitudes about student cheating . Journal of Research in Education Volume 24, Number 1 ... Cheating, or academic dishonesty, has been found to be common in studies over several decades and has raised concerns on college and university campuses more than ever before (Bowers,
As for age, Jensen et al. (2002) found that younger students were more inclined to cheat than older students. In a similar vein, Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead (1995) found that students' cheating was the function of their age. Petrak and Bartolac (2014) conducted a study with health students and found that cheating was moderately prevalent among the 1,088 students with whom their survey was ...
paper, academic dishonesty is a larger umbrella under which cheating is one aspect. Cheating has been defined in many ways; when it comes specifically to education and testing, it may have been best described by Dr. Gregory J. Cizek in 2012 at Educational Research Association (AERA) cheating as "any action taken before, during,
7. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer or the editor for pointing out that in the sort of case I have just described, we can imagine that the conduct of play was functionally perfect despite the game being thoroughly corrupted, and so whereas cheating is a form of corruption that presupposes a functional failing in the conduct of a competition, this is not a necessary condition of corruption.
We briefly summarize a history of cheating in the sports world. We examine the current role cheating plays in sports as well as its causes including, psychodynamic issues, the development of personality disorders and how personality traits become pathological resulting in deception, dishonesty, and underhandedness.
Preventing academic dishonesty is often made difficult by the lack of centralized and formalized university policies concerning cheating, faculty reluctance to take formal action against dishonest students, and limited attention paid to students' personal characteristics associated with a tendency to cheat . Based on the results of our study ...
Understanding academic dishonesty during the thesis-writing process: A case study of students majoring in tourism and hospitality ... concluded that cheating on final exams is the most prevalent misconduct among Chinese university students. Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding this growing phenomenon due to its ...
Thesis Statement Assignment. 3 Selected General Topics: 1. Relationships - Mother and child 2. ... Dishonesty - Cheating in sports. Thesis Statements: 1. A mothers bond with their child is naturally strong from birth, it has been questioned as to how that relationship is formed and how it grows or weakens over time. 2. A shared family meal ...
1. Introduction. Academic dishonesty has become a widespread problem in Chinese higher education institutions. Approximately half to three-quarters of students have reported encountering various forms of academic dishonesty while at university (Hodgkinson et al., 2016; Jian et al., 2020).Academic dishonesty encompasses any form of deception that occurs in an educational context (Jurdi et al ...
Cheating in Sports Thesis Statement - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free.
The purpose of this study was to examine the overall frequency of academic dishonesty among undergraduate students at a large urban college. The study explored the use of traditional cheating methods and contemporary cheating methods to determine the various forms of cheating, the number of times students cheat, and the number of ways students ...
Question: Each item below contains a general subject and a limited subject. Write a thesis statement for each group of words. education/ distance education communication/ the difference in people's voices work /paid vacation time dishonesty/ cheating in sports community/ volunteerism television reality shows relationships/ fathers and sons newspapers/ college
Exercise 1 The following exercise contains hypothetical thesis statements. On the blank line beside each statement, write "A" if the statement is arguable or "F" if the statement is a statement of fact. ___1. The amount of financial aid available to students should be proportionate to the ____