How referees are socially perceived? A first study about referees stereotype content

International audienceWhen the 2014 FIFA World Cup began with what we can consider as a mistake from the referee, medias, supporters and players immediately questioned the competency and/or the integrity of the referee. The penalty in favor of Brazil, the host state, triggered a quite unanimous reaction: we can already insure that Brazil will reach the final! Referees have instructions in that sense! This example illustrates how rightful it seems to discredit the referee, perhaps especially in football. According to us, this example, as well as many others, raises the question of referees’ social stereotypes. Stereotypes can be defined as “...a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996). It seems of great interest to question the social stereotypes regarding sport referees. Indeed, social stereotypes may have strong deleterious consequences on performance. Past literature indeed showed that negatively stereotyped individual might suffer when performing in a stereotype-relevant environment. For example, stigmatized pupils and students underperform in academic domain if their social group is negatively stereotyped regarding their school competences (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The same phenomenon, called “stereotypes threat”, appears in other domains and with other social groups such as women in driving (Chateigner, Chekroun, Nugier, & Dutrévis, 2011) Yeung & von Hippel, 2008) or white men in sports (Stone, Lynch, Sjomerling, & Darley, 1999). So if we demonstrate the existence of negative stereotypes about referees, it could contribute to explain their sometimes-disappointing performances. Moreover, stereotypes may also impact targets’ well-being and, as a consequence, their investment in their practice (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999; Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998).The presented study is a preliminary work designed to measure the content of referees’ stereotypes. To deal with this question, we chose a traditional measure of stereotypes that allows respondents to spontaneously describe referees. Stereotype content research has a long history. As soon as in 1933, Katz & Braly studied ethnic and national stereotypes through different measures. This study was largely reproduced during the 20th century (for a synthesis, see for example Madon Guyll, Aboufadel, Montiel, Smith, Palumbo, & Jussim, 2001). In each research, three measures are consecutively used. We will focus on the first one. A questionnaire simply instructs participants to write down as many attributes as necessary to describe referees. Participants were students from the University Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France). 3 questionnaires were created. Some participants had to spontaneously describe referees in general. Another group of participants had to characterize football referees. And the last group of participants was asked to give attributes of rugby referees. We hypothesized that referees would be described through the use of stereotypes; and we investigated whether some differences appeared between the three groups of participants. Results are currently under scrutiny. Three blind coders have examined the valence of each generated attribute. The next steps consist in 1) determining the main emerging categories and 2) examining the possible differences between football referees, rugby referees, and the general group “referees”. Results will be deeply presented and discussed, regarding their impact for referees’ performances and well-being