Emotalizer: Doping Amongst Elite Athletes

“Should the Russians be banned from the Olympics? We measure the public’s reaction to recent doping scandals”

The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio have already been plagued with controversy. There are increasing concerns around the facilities and the presence of Zika (so concerning to well-paid, professional golfers in particular that they had no choice but to withdraw). Meanwhile, the entire Olympic body has been under fire for internal corruption and allegations of doping.

In 2015 The Sunday Times stated that a study conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) at the 2011 Daegu World Championships found between 29% and 34% of elite athletes to have violated anti-doping rules in the 12 months prior to the research¹. So, in this Bite, we ask what the public’s reaction would be to the existence of doping on this scale.

This question generated the most negative responses we’ve seen in any of our Emotalizer Bites to-date, with 80% citing negative main emotions and only 18% apathetic or unsurprised. Notably, sports fans, as evidenced by being a Sky Sports subscriber, were significantly more likely to be upset.

We also asked respondents whether they were aware of the scandal around the Russian state sponsored doping scheme, for which the Russian team have been banned from competing in certain Olympic events. In total 79% of our sample were aware of this scandal and these respondents were also significantly more emotional about doping more generally.

The most common emotion was Anger (23%) followed by Disgust, Sadness and Disappointment. Of those who were aware of the Russia scandal, 71% think the entire Russian team should be banned from Rio. Anger and Disgust are also higher adrenaline emotions than we have seen in previous topics where negative low adrenaline emotions of Sadness and Worry were most common, showing that the topic of doping evokes strong emotions from the public.

The Olympics runs on adrenaline both on and off the track. But around the arena that needs to be in the form of excitement rather than enragement. Those golfers may have been right to avoid those pesky mosquitoes…

¹Reference: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/33952542