ArticleFrontiers in sports and active living2021
The Issue of Unconscious Bias in Referee Decisions in the National Rugby League.
Article in Frontiers in sports and active living, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- High tackle headache: implications of referee agreement for tackle height law change.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2025Article
- VAR consultation patterns and their association with fouls and misconduct: An analysis of the top five European football leagues.PloS one · 2025Article
- Disciplinary measures defining referee activity in top-European football leagues: A cross-sectional investigation.Heliyon · 2024Article
- An examination of social relations and concussion management via the blue card.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
- Reliability agreement in foul and penalty judgements between officials in the Swedish hockey league.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Referees are appointed to be impartial sporting figures. They are trained to provide leadership and guidance, interpret infractions, adjudicate rules, all while maintaining the highest levels of objectivity and sense. However, when decisions are driven by individual heuristics, limited information, context, goal motivations, emotions, time pressures and cognitive load, it can be difficult to discern how and why particular referee judgements are made. In this paper, we draw on data from the major Rugby League competition in Australia between the years 1978 to 2019 to examine whether clubs fare significantly better or worse under particular National Rugby League referees. We examine potential causes that might contribute to the referee effect and ask why, after years of specialist training and game assessments, are rugby league referees, even at the elite professional level, still processing information in preferential ways.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.