The fight against steroid use in the sports world has always been a cat-and-mouse game, with the cat—the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—always on the losing end and a step behind the manufacturers who create new designer steroids every time there’s a new testing method and the athletes who find new and ingenious ways to get away with doping. While the WADA continually update their testing methods to quell the latest designer steroids out in the market, manufacturers keep on acquiring new technologies and inventing new designer steroids that can evade detection from all types of testing methods currently employed.

Considerable money goes to the research and development of technology aimed at catching the illegal use of steroids and other banned substances among athletes. Every year or so, there are new doping methods used by athletes to enhance their performance such as gene doping, synthetic blood doping, and designer steroids created with dynamic combinatorial chemistry (DCC).

Because of this cat-and-mouse vicious cycle, the WADA has opened its doors to innovative ways of detecting steroid and illegal substance-use. The Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology recently reported that the WADA is considering psychological profiling and social analysis as methods for catching steroid users as well as users of other banned substances. The WADA is hoping that they would get a reliable indicator that includes self-reporting in the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

By self-reporting, it means that the athletes will answer a variety of questions about doping, hypothetical scenarios, and doping behavior of other athletes. If the athlete fits the psychological profile of a doper based on his or her responses, the athlete may be suspected of doping and the questionnaire can be used as evidence. Even if the athlete does not admit to using steroids or other illegal substances, the questionnaire can reveal more than he or she wants to reveal.

The method is based on a social psychology research called the ‘False Consensus Effect (FCE).’ This is the observation that a person who makes a significant overestimation over a particular behavior (or a slight underestimation is absent regarding the behavior) is likely to be engaged in that behavior. The FCE is also the effect by which people think and feel that their actions are relatively common behavior when it in fact is not. It can thus be used to gauge whether a person is engaged in a controversial behavior such as steroid-use or the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The belief is that people’s own behavior affects their estimation of how prevalent that particular behavior is. Therefore, the person’s estimation of how prevalent the use of performance-enhancing drugs is can be a reliable indicator of that person’s doping behavior.

In short, an athlete who says that most of his or her competitors are cheating must be cheating as well. Because this test is not full-proof, the researchers propose that this should not be used for catching dopers. Instead, the measurement tool should be used as a research tool for gathering information on the prevalence of the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in sports.

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