- It can be used for a medical
purpose, not for sports.
- It's not true or honest.
- If you wanna be good at something,
you have to put in the
work and the dedication.
- It's not really sports to me anymore.
- [Narrator] And that right
there pretty much sums up
how most people feel
about steroids in sports.
Researchers at Chicago
Booth decided to investigate
what's driving this opposition.
And the first thing they
asked is, "Do considerations
for fairness account for this opposition?"
Maybe it's really simple,
maybe it's just that people
don't want athletes to
have unfair advantages
over their competitors.
But what they found is
that there's more to it.
Actually, people would
still oppose steroids
even if using them wasn't unfair.
And if you think that's
just totally hypothetical,
let's talk about powerlifting.
If you're not one of those
people who spends hours
at the weight room at the gym,
you're probably wondering,
"what is powerlifting anyway?"
And, first off, it's not
the same as bodybuilding.
Here's a bodybuilder.
Here's a powerlifter.
Bodybuilding is like a beauty
competition for muscle.
Powerlifting...it's really simple.
It's just about how much
weight can you lift?
Powerlifting really only
got started in the 1970s,
and back then pretty much
everyone was experimenting
with steroids.
But then powerlifting split,
and that split is still there today.
So some federations,
they're organizations
that host competitions,
they prohibit steroids,
and they test for them.
But others...they just don't care.
Even world records in
powerlifting are divided
into two categories:
were the competitors
tested, or weren't they?
And a lot of different factors
can affect how much weight
a powerlifter will be able
to lift, other than steroids.
But, overall, powerlifters who use steroids
outperform those who don't by about ten percent.
And ten percent doesn't really seem like a lot,
but consider that, in powerlifting,
that can be a difference
of a few hundred pounds.
So getting around doping
tests, if you're competing
in a federation that
does test, is a big deal.
It's really unfair.
But what about someone who's
competing in a federation
that doesn't test?
I mean, they can be pretty
certain that every single one
of their serious competitors
is going to be using steroids.
So using steroids doesn't really
give them an unfair advantage.
And that's exactly the kind of scenario
that the researchers explored.
They tested ten factors
drawn from previous research.
And what they found is
that people's opposition
really comes down to only two factors.
The first is prudence.
Interestingly, what people
are concerned with here
is the health of the user.
They're worried about the
potential health risks.
It's kind of like opposing
cigarette smoking.
However, the main driver of opposition
is the presence of league rules
or state and federal laws.
Actually, it turns out
that people care more about
rules and laws than
they do about fairness.
And this is where it's
interesting to think about
the powerlifting competitions.
Because the federations that don't test
often don't have any rules
prohibiting steroids.
And the research indicates
that, in those cases,
people wouldn't be as
opposed to steroid use.
Of course, the law is still the law
and steroids do still have
tremendous health risks.
So there would be some
opposition, just not as much.
You can think of steroid use
like a particularly serious
violation of a social convention.
It's like if a bride did not
wear white on her wedding.
So if there were no rules or
laws prohibiting steroids,
they might no longer be opposed,
or at least not as strongly.
But, for now, even though
doping in powerlifting,
or really any professional
sports, is not going anywhere,
neither is the bad rep it gets.
