Doping has serious negative consequences for athletes and the integrity of sports, implying the need for effective prevention programs. Since educating young athletes about doping-related knowledge is deemed to be not sufficiently effective to minimize doping, a focus on values, emotions and morality is seen as a promising approach and previous research indicates which variables exactly could be addressed in anti-doping efforts. These variables are anticipated guilt, empathy, moral disengagement, and collective moral norms, since these constructs have been strongly and consistently linked to doping intention, likelihood, or behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a values-based anti-doping intervention, which targets the aforementioned variables, and to evaluate its effectiveness in producing changes in outcomes in comparison to an information-based intervention and a waiting control group. To evaluate their effectiveness, both interventions, which each consist of six 45-min sessions (one session per week) were implemented in a sample of 321 young elite athletes, aged 13–19 years, from a broad range of team and individual sports. Thirty different teams, training groups or classes were randomly assigned to either the values-based intervention, the information-based intervention, or to a waiting control group. Doping intention, doping susceptibility as well as the above mentioned variables were assessed at pre- and posttest and, for participants of the values- and information-based conditions also at a 3 to 4-month follow up. Within a multilevel modeling framework general linear mixed regression analyses revealed that the values-based intervention, compared to the control group, was able to decrease athletes' moral disengagement and increase their anticipated guilt immediately after the intervention (at posttest), whereas no effects for the information-based intervention emerged. Looking at how the outcomes developed over time (i.e., at the follow up measurement), it could be demonstrated that the reduction in moral disengagement sustained. The increase in anticipated guilt, however, was not sustainable and, surprisingly, decreased from post to follow up. Furthermore, athletes in the values-based intervention reported higher empathy from post to follow up, which could possibly indicate a “delayed” effect. This study provides support that a values-based approach can produce changes in some, yet, not all addressed variables and specific elements from this intervention could potentially be a useful addition to traditional anti-doping education (i.e., information provision).

The present paper extends previous research in terms of integrating social learning with morality theories, under the framework of moral educators’ and their conflicting moral influences. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the impact of witnessing moral educators breaking (their) moral teachings on individual’s morality and criminal behavior using a sample of two countries, Sweden and Greece, with similar population but entirely different cultural and social characteristics. We focus on three research questions regarding the correlations and (i) the explanatory influence of witnessing this conflict on moral emotions and values by gender and country, (ii) its impact on traditional crime by gender and country and (iii) the impact that witnessing the conflict and morality mutually have on traditional crime in the two countries. Our findings emerge in three key points. First, we found that witnessing moral educators influenced both moral emotions differentially in each country and gender, but only affected Swedish males’ moral values. Secondly, our results showed that witnessing moral educators can explain a moderate to small variance of traditional crime only for males in the two countries. Lastly, we found that witnessing moral educators together with morality can explain a moderate variance of traditional crime in the two countries, while gender is highly important for both countries. Findings are discussed in relation to theory and previous research. Future research is recommended in order to expand the understanding of the cultural and social learning processes that inhibit (im)moral contexts and subsequently affect morality and offending.