Inevitable? Doping attitudes among Berliners in 2011: the role of socialist state socialisation and athlete experience

Abstract

To design effective and commonly accepted public health policies against performance-enhancing drugs (PED), it is important to understand general population attitudes. This article elicits PED attitudes in the Berlin population and compares response rates of former athletes (N = 496) with those of non-athletes (N = 1686). In addition, exploiting the natural experiment of the division of Germany, by comparing East (N = 687) to West Berliners (N = 1315), the article studies the long-term impact of state socialisation on PED attitudes. Former West German amateur athletes are a statistically significant 6ppt more likely to believe that athletes can be successful without doping. Former GDR amateur athletes are 8ppt more likely to believe that doping is inevitable in professional sports.