Examining a negative halo effect to anabolic steroids users through perceived achievement goals,sportspersonship orientations,and aggressive tendencies

We investigated the social image of anabolic steroids (AS) users grounding our analysis on the achievement goal theory of Nicholls. Our main goal was to explore how an athlete’s acceptance of AS use would impact on the way that athlete will be perceived by others. Non‐AS‐using participants reacted to one of two scenarios portraying a male athlete either accepting or refusing to engage in drug use behavior. The results suggested that the acceptance of anabolic steroids yielded an unfavorable social image – perceivers inferred a predominant ego orientation to characterize the AS‐user’s motivation as well as weaker sportspersonship and a stronger proclivity for reactive aggression than instrumental aggression. Moreover, the analyses did not yield significant gender or interaction effects. Finally, those findings are commented in view of methodological shortcomings and of the perspectives that they may offer for future research concerning the motivational aspects of the social perceptions of drug use in sport.     

Why the Capability Approach is Justified

abstract   Sen and Nussbaum's capability approach has in the past twenty years become an increasingly popular and influential approach to issues in global justice. Its main tenet is that when assessing quality of life or asking what kind of policies will be more conducive to human development, we should look not to resources or preference satisfaction, but to what people are able to be and to do. This should then be measured against a more or less narrow conception of what any human being should be able to be and do, i.e. which functions are essentially human. To have a capability is to be able to function in that way. Thomas Pogge has recently argued that despite its many attractions, the capability approach did not present a sufficiently strong challenge to Rawlsian resourcism. In this paper, I address Pogge's criticisms of the capability approach, and I argue that from the point of view of Nussbaum's Aristotelian version of the approach, his objections are not successful.