Positive Psychology: Lance Armstrong's Drug Confession and the Psychology of Elite Athletes

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Lance Armstrong's Drug Confession and the Psychology of Elite Athletes

For elite athletes, competition is like a drug.

Lance Armstrong after years of adamantly insisting he had not used performance-enhancing drugs to win seven Tour de France titles, he’s reportedly fessed up to Oprah…presumably because he can’t stand being out of the competitive loop.

Armstrong is facing:
- a lawsuit from a former teammate that he used public money to buy doping products,

Armstrong is apparently hoping for some leniency in the lifetime ban from the sport that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) imposed last summer.

They also revoked his Tour de France titles. All because Lance decided not to contest the doping charges the agency filed against him.

The agency had an open and shut case against him. He could not fight it and still trying to dodge public scrutiny, he chose to not fight in hopes the whole thing would go away.

Maintaining his innocence at the time, Armstrong left the question of did-he-or-didn’t-he officially unanswered, presumably for perpetuity (although that wasn’t the case in the court of public opinion).

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Armstrong met with Travis Tygart, CEO of USADA in December in an effort to lift the ban so he could continue his athletic career as an endurance athlete competing in triathlons.

Tygart apparently told Armstrong that if he came clean, he could expect his lifetime ban to be reduced to eight years.

Armstrong angrily responded: “There’s one person who holds the keys to my redemption, and that’s me,” and walked out of the meeting.

David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, agrees that nothing short of a complete confession from Armstrong is necessary before he would even consider any leniency on the ban.

“Only when Mr. Armstrong makes a full confession under oath — and tells the anti-doping authorities all he knows about doping activities — can any legal and proper process for him to seek any reopening or reconsideration of his lifetime ban commence,” he said in a written statement.

In fact, Kilduff says that the very nature of intense competition, and the features that make the best competitors, may explain not just Armstrong’s yen to feel the adrenaline rush of racing again, but the seeming incongruity of athletes who cheat.

Certainly the drive to win can, on the one hand, be an inspiration for achieving excellence. “Elite athletes are elite because they can’t stand being average,” says Matt Rhea, an associate professor at A.T. Still University in Arizona and the president of RaceRx, a private sports conditioning and performance-enhancement company.

Competition also motivates people to work harder, as Rhea found in a 2003 study he conducted of weightlifters.

When amateur athletes performed both in front of bystanders and competed against others, they lifted about four pounds more than during training sessions.

“We have measured a dramatic increase in performance during competition, which is one reason why so many records are broken at the Olympics,” says Rhea. “You don’t want to be an average Tour de France cyclist; you want to be the greatest. That’s what makes these athletes so unique and driven.”

But that same drive also tends to promote higher levels of unethical behavior, justified by the win-at-all-costs mentality, which isn’t just confined to athletics. In academia, the most competitive students are more likely to cheat.

So in the end, it’s likely that the very characteristics that made Armstrong a good athlete — the discipline to train, the unconditional commitment to achieving a goal, and the single-minded trust that he would succeed — may have fueled his doping and, ironically, his need to confess in order to regain his status as a competitor.

“In their efforts to be viewed as legendary, they at times might cross the line when it comes to the law or to the rules of sport,” says Rhea.

Source:
Lance Armstrong's Drug Confession and the Psychology of Elite Athletes | TIME.com

http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/17/lance-armstrongs-confession-and-the-psychology-of-the-competitor/?iid=hl-article-mostpop1

Positive Psychology given credence by Academia:

Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Commentators on the subject Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, note that:

"The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present).

At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom.

At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation,tolerance, and work ethic."