Influencing refs

[so cal lurker]

Originally Posted by Rich

Two words:

Confirmation bias.

Hmm. Is there any of that in the reaction to this data in the posts here? Seems like there is just an assumption the data must be wrong . . .

Mind you, I'm not at all arguing for the studies, I haven't looked at them closely enough. As refs, we certainly believe that we are fully independent and uninfluenced by yelling and crowds. But what, to me, is interesting about the 538 NFL analysis, is that it didn't look at the plays themselves and try to say whether or not they were good calls (itself subjective), it only looked at the location of the play and the fouls that were called -- an objective criteria.* I do think it is interesting that there was a measurable difference in the number of calls favoring a team in front of its own bench versus the other -- by very high level refs. Correlation is not causation, etc., etc. Similarly, the soccer referee noise level study is interesting -- I'd like to see more about the details, but I believe I heard a bit about this study somewhere else, and they used high level soccer referees for that study.

These studies do *suggest* (notice I didn't say prove) that even those of us who think we are immune are more affected by the noise and the coaches than we think we are. As a referee (I'm a soccer ref), I think it is something to think about and be aware of -- not to obsess over but be aware that there is some reason to think I might not be as unfazed as I think I am and to pay attention to the possibility.

[Kansas Ref]

Originally Posted by so cal lurker

Hmm. "...1. an objective criteria.* I do think it is interesting that there was a measurable difference in the number of calls favoring a team in front of its own bench versus the other -- by very high level refs. Correlation is not causation, etc., etc. Similarly, the soccer referee noise level study is interesting -- I'd like to see more about the details, but I believe I heard a bit about this study somewhere else, and they used high level soccer referees for that study.

2. These studies do *suggest* (notice I didn't say prove) that even those of us who think we are immune are more affected by the noise and the coaches than we think we are. As a referee (I'm a soccer ref), I think it is something to think about and be aware of -- not to obsess over but be aware that there is some reason to think I might not be as unfazed as I think I am and to pay attention to the possibility.

1. Yes that is very interesting trend and worthy of further study; however, a contributing factor to that bias could be that when Coach has his team in-front of him i.e., in his half of th court---whether they be on offense or defense--he is communicating with them and they are listening [and believing] to Coach's because they are in closer earshot. THis in turn helps them to either execute offense better or impose stronger smarter defense. Just sayin...the proposed "coach proximity' effect. This proposal could be checked for by parsing the data by "First Half vs Second Half" to see if: Team A is on defense --do they cause more fouls/violations on the offense then? Then, Team A on offense--do they get more fouls/violations in their favor than on the defense?

2. Yes there are subconconcious effects--your threshold for tolerance gets lowered which in turn leads you to make more calls as you said "tighten the game".