Influence, Environment, or Selection: The Spread of PED use in MLB

• In Event: 043 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Colleges, Sports, and Prisons: Social Contexts of Drug Use

Abstract

Why do individuals tend to be similar to those they associate with? Distinguishing between the potential causal factors underlying the social clustering of behaviors is difficult due to nature of voluntary associations traditionally studied. Major League Baseball teams represent a form of association that is not entirely voluntary, and thus, serves as an exemplary case for distinguishing between influence, environment, and selection as mechanisms generating similarity within social networks. In this article, I utilize the names listed in the Mitchell Report and the names of baseball players who have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) to determine that the primary force responsible for the clustering of PED users in teammate networks is social influence.

Author

• Joshua Murray, Vanderbilt University