Changing attitudes and intentions related to doping: An analysis of individual differences in need for cognition

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that athletes’ attitudes towards the use of banned performance-enhancing substances are reliable predictors of their intentions to use these substances, which in turn can be relevant predictors of their actual doping behaviours. Despite the important role played by attitudes and intentions in doping, research analysing how to change those attitudes and intentions is relatively scarce. The present study examined how individual differences in Need for Cognition (NC, Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) influenced doping-related attitude change and subsequent behavioural intentions. Participants were randomly assigned to read a persuasive message either against or in favour of legalising the use of several banned substances, including anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and Erythropoietin (EPO). In addition, participants completed the NC scale, and finally reported their attitudes and behavioural intentions regarding the legalisation proposal. As hypothesised, results showed that participants who received an anti-legalisation message had significantly more unfavourable attitudes towards the proposal than participants who received a pro-legalisation message, regardless of NC. However, as predicted, NC moderated the relationship between individuals’ attitudes and their intentions. That is, high-NC participants showed greater attitude-intention correspondence than low-NC participants.     

Applying White Dialectics: Exploring Whiteness and Racial Identity among White College Athletes

This article seeks to synthesize and apply White racial identity theory and concomitant research to the interaction between athletic and racial identity, specifically as it relates to the experiential variations of how race impacts White athletes within the college sport environment. White dialectics, or the tensions that White Americans experience as dominant social group members, serve as the guiding theoretical framework and provide a theoretical lens through which the experience of White college athletes is examined at each distinct dialectic. Through this article, the application of White dialectics offers a theoretical foundation for developing a better understanding of how White college athletes not only make sense of their racial identity, but also understand their racialized experiences within intercollegiate athletics.     

Uncertain pathways: foundation skills tutors and marginalised students in neoliberal times

This article deals with the work of polytechnic tutors on adult foundation programmes and describes how their work has been affected by the current neoliberal climate in the education sector. Inclusive neoliberalism is characterised by heightened regulation, reduced support for the public sector and a greater requirement for individual responsibility. The push to improve skills to meet labour demand is promoted as addressing social needs. Policies devised to promote these neoliberal values have led to numerous and far-reaching changes in adult education. In this study 73 foundation skills educators drawn from 8 institutions were interviewed to gain their insights into the effects of these policies. The article discusses three types of detrimental effects: the growing distrust between teaching staff and management; unsettling changes to institutional policy and its effects on staffing issues; and threats to the professionalism of teaching staff, the delivery of foundation studies, and the students themselves. Finally, the article suggests alternative possibilities for addressing these issues.     

Narrative Capacity,Resistance Performance,and the “Shape” of New Social Movement Networks

The current research explored two new social movement networks in the United States in order to demonstrate the impact of narrative capacity on the “shape” of an activist network. In particular, we found that activists in a network that demonstrated efficient narrative capacity described the hub organization in positive terms, while activists in a network that demonstrated poor narrative capacity held mixed perceptions about the hub. Some activists in the second network held positive perceptions about the organization, while others held negative perceptions. The observations from these two research sites led us to conceptualize activists' differing perceptions about their respective hub organizations as “distance” that they experienced from that hub. Therefore, two different star shapes emerged from our research: a symmetrical star and elongated star. Such findings demonstrate the importance for narrative capacity in the construction and maintenance of effective activist networks.     

Irony and Language Expectancy Theory: Evaluations of Expectancy Violation Outcomes

Language expectancy theory (LET) provides the basis for a study of the relationship of ironic and literal messages in terms of persuasiveness and expectedness. The experimental design was a 2 (literal vs. ironic) × 2 (compliment vs. criticism) factor design. The expectation was that literal messages would be more expected and criticisms less preferred to compliments. The results indicated that the ironic messages tended to be negative, unexpected, and attributed to the situation as opposed to the sender. Compliments were associated with fewer behavioral intentions than were criticisms. The interaction also revealed that the ironic messages were a safe middle ground between literal criticisms and compliments in terms of fostering behavioral changes.     

Narrowmobilization and Tea Party Activism: A Study of Right-Leaning Alternative Media

Past research concerning the theoretical framework of Resistance Performance (RP) has been based on observations of liberal organizations and activists. In the following essay, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of alternative media utilized by conservative “Tea Party” activists to build on the concept of RP. Overall, we discovered that the dominant theme found in much of the content focuses on “purity,” which is considerably different from past RP research that found broad themes of “human rights,” “democracy,” “be the media,” and “principles of unity” embedded within liberal alternative media content. We conclude that the theme of “purity” gives rise to narrowmobilization, which constructs very focused protest communities within right-leaning politics.     

Police Media: The Governance of Territory,Speed, and Communication

The work of the modern police apparatus is highly dependent upon media technologies. This article traces crucial developments in this history, analyzing the central role that media have played in policing practices since the advent of the modern patrol in the late eighteenth century. We trace how the governmentalized police force has used media to govern efficiently what Foucault calls the three great variables: territory, speed, and communication. In conclusion, we consider the possibilities for resistance in a time when digital police media have given rise to alarming strategies for surveilling populations, stifling dissent, and exerting control over public and private space.     

The somatic marker as a “short cut” to verbal immediacy

This study examined the relationships between the somatic‐marker hypothesis, developed by Damasio (1994) as it relates to homophily and verbal immediacy in the classroom. Damasio has hypothesized that when particular events occur in one's life, there is a “memory” of that event in the brain. As a result, when a similar event occurs, the somatic marker recreates that first event. Students were provided three different scenarios about the first day of a communication class. In the scenarios, the instructor presented information about himself. One instructor provided only autobiographical, demographic data (the control). Another provided information hozu he had had difficulty with public speaking (the selfish marker). The third provided information about how the instructor had helped someone else who had difficulty in public speaking (the altruistic marker). The results indicated that while homophily differences were not significant, there was a significant difference between the control group and the altruistic marker.     

Use of inoculation to foster resistance to credit card marketing targeting college students

Student credit card debt is a growing problem. This study explores the effectiveness of the inoculation strategy to foster resistance to credit card marketing targeting college students. In order to explore further the medical analogy on which the inoculation strategy is based, this study was the first systematically to alter the argument strength of both the counterarguments and refutations in the inoculation pretreatment message to determine whether argument strengths impact effectiveness of inoculation treatments. In addition, this investigation explored whether inoculation spreads from person to person via social channels, similar to the marketing concept of viral marketing. Results indicated that conventional inoculation treatment messages successfully inoculated college students against credit card advertisements, manifested in attitude valence and behavioral intentions, and that matching argument strength is the most effective inoculation strategy.