Metacognitive Skills Approach to Achieve Performance: Is There Any Moderating Role of Performance-Enhancing Drugs?

Abstract

Athletes’ on-field performance is an amalgamation of their off-the-field activities as millions of dollars get invested into sports science to help them effectuate their performance, strength, and conditioning. Athletes have to go through a plethora of obstacles to effectuate athletic ranking, financial benefits, and sponsors availability while balancing their personal and professional lives. Such generic challenges can propel them to resort to unethical practices to survive in the competitive environment. Ostensibly, athletes have started consuming prohibited substances to boost their performance. Theoretical implications of performance-enhancing drugs have been drawn explicitly for enhancing performance but moderating effects of the latter have not been reflected between metacognition and performance. Thus, this article documents the relationship between metacognition and performance among professional athletes (N =304) with attention to the moderating role of performance-enhancing drugs through hierarchical regression analysis. Results allowed for the complete acceptance of steroids as a significant moderator but to a lesser extent. The implications suggest that interventions, which can enhance the performance of the athletes, should be developed, so athletes do not fall prey to the utilization of performance-enhancing drugs. Also, a mixed-method study design could be the future scope of the study as it compensates for the losses served by either of the methods. The study made recommendations and drew suggestions for future research.