The psychology of sport officiating

Abstract

Sport officials are key actors in organized and competitive sports. With numerous required tasks (e.g., attending to athlete safety and applying fair decisions), sport officials must possess several competencies including appropriate positioning, adequate fitness, excellent rule knowledge, and contextual judgement. To enhance the consistency and quality of sport officiating performances, psychological skills are also required. The purpose of this article is to broadly review the research as it pertains to the psychology of sport officiating. After outlining sport officials' roles, we describe relevant models and theories that have been applied to sport officiating research—some of which are specific to sport officials, while others are drawn from general psychology. Following, we provide insights on key studies that form the evidence base for understanding sport officials' psychology, including mental skills, motivation, group dynamics, communication, and decision-making. The final section offers direction to future researchers to overcome some of the challenges in this field. These challenges include relatively few studies on sport officials from individual sports, a lack of demographic diversity among the studied sport officials, little investigation into sport officials’ mental skills, and minimal theories that exist to predict and explain the psychology of sport officiating. Collectively, we hope this article not only inspires more research on the psychology of sport officiating, but also offers strategic direction to future researchers to ensure meaningful studies in this field.