The impact of a team's aggressive reputation on the decisions of association football referees

• Published in: Journal of sports sciences Vol. 20; no. 12; pp. 991 - 1000
• Main Authors: Jones, Marc V., Paull, Geoffrey C., Erskine, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis 01.12.2002; Taylor and Francis
• Subjects: Aggression; Aggressive Reputation; Analysis of Variance; Applied psychology; Bias; Biological and medical sciences; Cooperative Behavior; Decision Making; Decision Model; Football; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Prejudice; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Recognition-PRIMED; Referees; Soccer; Sport Officials; Sports. Leisure; Human; soccer; Mishap; recognition-primed decision model; Arbitration; Decision making; Team sport; Repression; Athlete; Football; Play; Sport; decision-making; Heuristic method; bias; sport officials; Behavior; referees; aggressive reputation; Aggressiveness
• ISSN: 0264-0414; 1466-447X
• DOI: 10.1080/026404102321011751

It has been suggested that individuals may use heuristic methods of reasoning and rely on schemata when a quick decision is necessary. Accordingly, it is possible that decisions made by sport officials may be influenced by prior knowledge they have about teams they are officiating. The aim of the present study was to determine whether sport officials are more likely to penalize individuals who participate in a team with an aggressive reputation. In a balanced design, 38 football referees were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group and were presented with the same 50 video clips of incidents from football games, all involving a team in a blue strip ('blue team'). The incidents were categorized before the study by five experienced referees into fouls committed both by, and against, the blue team, where all participants agreed that a foul had been committed (certain incidents), disagreed it was a foul (uncertain incidents) or agreed that there was no foul (innocuous incidents). Both groups received written instructions before the task; in addition, the experimental group was informed that the blue team present in all of the clips had a reputation for foul and aggressive play. For each incident, the participants were required to indicate what action they would engage in if refereeing the game. Although there was no difference in the number of decisions made, the experimental group awarded significantly more red and yellow cards against the blue team both overall and for the 'certain' incidents. It is suggested that prior knowledge may impact referees' behaviour in a laboratory setting, although future research should explore whether a similar effect is observed in the behaviour of referees during football matches.