Hancock David J, Pizzera Alexandra
Memorial University of Newfoundland, 230 Elizabeth Avenue, St. John's, NL, A1C 5S7, Canada.
German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Psychology, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, Cologne, 50933, Germany.
Psychol Sport Exerc. 2025 Sep;80:102899. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102899. Epub 2025 May 28.
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.
体育官员是有组织的竞技体育中的关键角色。由于有众多必需完成的任务（例如，关注运动员安全并做出公平裁决），体育官员必须具备多种能力，包括合适的站位、足够的体能、出色的规则知识以及情境判断力。为提高体育裁判表现的一致性和质量，还需要心理技能。本文的目的是广泛回顾与体育裁判心理学相关的研究。在概述体育官员的角色之后，我们描述已应用于体育裁判研究的相关模型和理论——其中一些是体育官员特有的，而其他一些则借鉴自普通心理学。接下来，我们对构成理解体育官员心理证据基础的关键研究提供见解，包括心理技能、动机、群体动态、沟通和决策。最后一部分为未来的研究人员提供方向，以克服该领域的一些挑战。这些挑战包括对个人项目体育官员的研究相对较少、被研究的体育官员缺乏人口统计学多样性、对体育官员心理技能的研究很少，以及用于预测和解释体育裁判心理学的理论极少。总体而言，我们希望本文不仅能激发更多关于体育裁判心理学的研究，还能为未来的研究人员提供战略方向，以确保在该领域开展有意义的研究。
