Height Bias in Basketball Refereeing: The Influence of Player and Referee Height on
Foul Decisions
Abstract
Simulation theory posits that individuals use internal motor simulations to anticipate others' actions. Embodied officiating, aligning with this theory, suggests that referees use similar
We tested whether basketball referees favor players of similar height in their foul decision making, as shared physical attributes might facilitate the simulation of their actions. Analyzing 8641 foul calls from 219 games in the
-Bundesliga season, we found that mean height differences between referees and players modestly affected foul calls: Referees called more fouls as the height difference with the fouling players increased, and fewer as the height of fouled players increased. These findings suggest that physical attributes like height may subtly influence referees' judgments and indicate complex interactions between referee and players height.
Further research is needed to determine the mechanisms behind this effect.
Keywords: judgment, decision making, embodied cognition, sports official, embodied choices, physical attributes
Introduction
With fairness in sport competition being primed as the predominant moral principle, a basic requirement for sport officials is to judge impartially to secure the integrity and legitimacy of any professional sport competition [1]. However, as long as a substantial grey area exists between legal and illegal contact (fouls) in most sports, sport officials will
rely solely on the written rule system (i.e., formal cue) but also require subjective judgment [2]. Many fouls committed in sports are ambiguous, and there is no objective way of
1		is. Time and information constraints sometimes cause the officials to rely on foul-unrelated decision cues, leading to systematic biases [3]. Decision-making bias in sports officiating is commonly understood as a systematic deviation in officials	3], reflecting a pattern in which their decisions systematically shift in one direction such as favouring the home team rather than varying randomly. These biases can operate at both conscious and unconscious levels [4]. Importantly, the term bias is used here descriptively to denote an asymmetric cognitive association that may systematically influence how individuals evaluate foul situations, without necessarily implying that such tendencies are inaccurate or incorrect.
Indeed, in sport, a wide variety of biases has been made apparent, e.g., the home crowd [5,6], the athletes	[7]	[8], the athletes	[9], the effects of previous decisions (e.g., showing a yellow card; 10,11), the color of an athlete uniform [12,13], and the passage of the game [11]. While it's not unusual for athletes and coaches to express frustration with officiating, comments made by Purdue University head coach Matt Painter, suggest that body height may be one of the underlying factors
1 In this manuscript, the terms "victim" and "perpetrator" are used for the sake of clarity and ease of understanding within the sports context. The use of these terms is purely related to the specific roles of players involved in fouls and does not imply any form of wrongdoing beyond the rules and regulations of the game.
contributing to such frustration - particularly in the case of 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey. Speaking after a game, Painter highlighted the physicality Edey endured and argued that
treatment on the court to that of a piñata, stating:
What's happening is, he's getting away with some small things, but the magnitude of the fouls that are not getting called for him is like three to one The egregious chucks, grabs and all those things, they've got to be called, and it's got to be called every time. I think the officials don't want to call it every single time because in most scenarios, people aren't going to do that. But since he's such a tough cover, that's what keeps happening. [14]
Indeed, the so-called height bias has been demonstrated in previous studies and has been
[15]	[16]. In the present study we aimed to examine whether
-Bundesliga games.
Focusing on referee height, Gift and Rodenberg [15] analyzed more than 4000 NBA basketball games regarding a potential effect of the mean height of the three-person officiating crews relative to player height on the number of foul calls. Their findings showed that shorter officiating crews called more fouls, which the authors attributed to a different basketball officiating style compared to their taller colleagues possibly influenced by the
, a term commonly used
to overcompensate for a lack of height through overly aggressive or assertive behavior. A second analysis, conducted to investigate whether the number of foul calls increases when players are taller, failed to support the hypothesis, as there was no evidence indicating that shorter referee crews call more fouls on taller players compared to their taller counterparts.

105

Examining the impact of player height difference on foul decisions in soccer, van
Quaquebeke and Giessner [16] found in field data and two experiments that in tackle situations, participants were more likely to attribute a foul to the taller of the two players involved in the tackle. These findings were explained by a postulated embodied association between perceptions of body height and dominance. P
abstract concepts, such as power or dominance, are embodied in modal information about space and body (such as height), leading to an automatic link between a vertical dimension in space and thoughts about dominance and power [17,18]. While we agree that judgment and decision-making processes are embodied [19,20], we suggest that the sport officials role, shaped by their own bodily experiences and how their bodies relate to those of the athletes, is crucial and should therefore be included in the analyses. We posit that officials physical experiences and how these experiences resonate with the actions they observe on the court play a significant role in their decision-making processes and argue that sport officials simulate athletes [20], rather than basing their decisions on associations between body height and abstract concepts.
Understanding how individuals perceive and interpret the actions of others is essential in exploring the cognitive processes underlying decision making. Simulation theory offers a valuable framework for exploring these processes, suggesting that individuals perceive or imagine the actions of conspecifics by internally simulating them with a network that includes the motor system [21,22]. Notably, studies revealed that these activations of the motor system can not only occur online (i.e., through information resulting from current sensorimotor experiences) but also off-line. Offline effects describe the influence of past self-stored experiences of previously learned or executed movements on present decision-making processes which can take place even in the absence of current physical movement [23]. This off-line engagement of the motor system relies on a simulation mechanism that enables the

130

mind to anticipate the feasibility of actions and potential action outcomes [22].

The common coding approach [24] provides further insights into the underlying mechanisms of simulation theory. According to this approach, motor representations of specific movements, like shooting a basketball, are linked to perceptual representations of the same movements, such as watching someone shoot a basketball. This connection is facilitated by a shared code for both action and perception, enabling a bidirectional transfer between motor training and perceptual judgment. This interconnectedness provides a foundation for understanding how individuals mentally simulate and comprehend the actions of others, contributing to our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in decision making. These motor activations also occur when observing complex, skilled whole-body movements, with stronger activation in individuals who are experts in performing these movements [25]: In a study comparing the brain activity of expert dancers watching videos of their own dance style versus an unfamiliar style, researchers found greater activation in motor regions when dancers viewed movements they had been trained to perform. This suggests that the human brain understands actions through motor simulation [25].
Thus, there is growing evidence that specific motor experience can support more [20,26,27,28,29]. Indeed, sport officials with specific motor experience have been shown to make better decisions than officials without specific motor experience [30]. For example, Renden et al. [31] demonstrated superior accuracy in detecting deceptive movements in referees and expert soccer players (both groups possessing past and current motor experience) compared to fans (possessing visual experience) and novices (neither visual nor motor experience). Similarly, Pizzera [30] found that gymnastic judges with motor experience as gymnasts displayed enhanced perceptual judgments compared to judges without such bodily experiences. Luis Del Campo et al. [32] provide additional support by revealing that soccer referees with

155

current motor experience obtained the highest accuracy in decision making performance when
evaluating ambiguous actions. Their performance was followed by the group of referees with past motor experience, whereas referees without any motor experience achieved the lowest percentage of correct decisions.
We believe that these motor experiences are bound to the anatomy (including biomechanical and morphological constraints) of the decision
attributes such as body height potential factors influencing embodied choices. Although this has not been examined directly, evidence has shown that body height can affect movement. Regarding postural balance, for example, the consensus in the literature is that increased height worsens postural balance [33,34]. When evaluating the influence of anthropometric characteristics and gender on postural balance, the results indicated that body height was the anthropometric variable influencing postural balance the most for males and
[35]		. In line with this, we propose that referees are less able to simulate specific athletes motor actions when they differ in height because the motor experiences and physical features they draw from are less similar. Thus, poorer embodied simulation leads to less accurate judgments	and their movements.
Aligning with the simulation theory, we predict that not only height is relevant but even more so the height difference between sport official and player. Contrasting Gift and Rodenberg [15], who only considered the average height of the three- person-refereeing crew as a relevant factor and concluded that height bias was solely demonstrated by shorter referees against taller players, we assume that the height relative to
can also be committed by taller referees against shorter players. Given the expected height distributions of basketball players and referees, it is generally more likely that the referee is
[15]		
180

results are therefore coherent with our
hypothesis. However, their approach did not account for the specific interaction between the heights of both players involved in a foul (victim and perpetrator). Although they included an interaction term between referee crew height and perpetrator height, the use of averaged crew heights limits the ability to draw precise conclusions regarding how the heights of the referee and players involved in the foul interact in these specific contexts.
Another factor distinguishing our research from the previous is the theoretical reasoning. While earlier work attributes height bias to social or evolutionary psychology, suggesting either that taller individuals are automatically associated with increased aggressiveness due to abstract concepts or that shorter officials (sub-)consciously compensate for their height by being more assertive. Although these explanations may contribute to or even fully account for the observed effect, we would like to propose an alternative justification. It can be reasonably assumed that sport officals, like all individuals, are not entirely immune to cognitive biases or stereotypes. Nevertheless, their primary role is to evaluate behaviour rather than individuals, and their motivation to carry out this task with high accuracy is likely to be substantial. Yet, when officials are less able to accurately simulate with athletes who differ markedly from themselves in height, their decision-making processes may rely more on heuristic shortcuts. In other words, a reduced ability to simulate the movements of athletes with dissimilar physical characteristics leaves them more susceptible to bias. Thus, by applying simulation theory, we aim to provide an approach that could also explain both potential directions of the bias how referees make different calls for both taller and shorter players and how their own height affects their decision making. This dual applicability where a height bias may affect not only taller players (due to calls made by the shorter referees) but also shorter players (due to calls made by the taller referees)

204

underscores the potential of simulation theory to provide a more nuanced and complete
understanding of the interactions between sport officials and athletes characteristics in sports officiating.
We hypothesized that in contact situations between two players of different heights, the referee is more likely to favour the player with a similar height respective to the referee
affected by bias. Consequently, we further hypothesized that the number of calls will be higher when the average height of the victim is more similar to the height of the referee compared to the height of the perpetrator. Thus, our prediction diverges from the hypotheses of Van Quaquebeke and Giessner [16], who posited that in contact situations, the taller player would be more likely identified as the one committing the foul, irrespective of the referee making the call. Our prediction further differs from Gift and Rodenberg [15], who considered
account for the height of each individual referee, instead only considering the mean height of the three-person officiating crew.
Method
Data
The study was approved by the local ethical committee (ethics approval number 143/2022). Using Sportlounge (www.sportlounge.com), an interactive video portal with an extensive database of basketball game videos, we aimed at conducting an analysis of all foul decisions from all 306 regular season games	-
Bundesliga (BBL). Due to unavailable or unplayable data files, data from 87 games had to be excluded, resulting in a total of 8641 recorded foul incidents in 219 games (averaging 40 foul decisions per game). No power analysis was conducted prior to the analysis as we assessed the full data available from the entire season. To gather additional information about the

229

referees, we sent out a survey conducted through Qualtrics [36]
German 1st Basketball-Bundesliga in April 2023. The survey consisted of several sections, including Likert-style items as well as demographic and open-ended questions, and assessed specific referee characteristics such as height, weight, years and level of officiating experience, years of basketball playing experience, league affiliation, position of play. Only
height-related influences on decision making. Information about prior playing experience, while potentially relevant, was not included in the statistical model because all respondents reported having played basketball, rendering the variable invariant and therefore uninformative. Other variables, while potentially relevant in broader contexts, were excluded as they fell outside the scope of the research question.
Video Analyses and Variables
We reviewed 8641 foul incidents and recorded several variables including game day,
foul and the referee who made the call. In cases where multiple referees made the same decision, we noted the names of each referee, with the referee who announced the decision at
To test the hypothesis presented in this study, we computed the absolute relative height of the player in relation to the referee as follows: For each foul called, the relative height of the victim was computed as the absolute value of the difference between the victim's height and the height of the referee making the call. Similarly, the absolute relative height of the perpetrator for each call was computed using the same method. Consequently, a player's absolute relative height represents an index of the distance between the referee's height and the player's height, which has a value of zero when the player and the referee are of the same height.

254

Survey Procedure

After obtaining ethical approval, we distributed the survey link via email to all the referees belonging to the A-Kader of the German basketball referee association for the season
questionnaire only after providing consent to participate in the survey. The completion of the survey typically took around five minutes. Out of the 32 referees approached, three referees chose not to participate in the survey, therefore, no self-report data were collected from them. Nonetheless, their body height was estimated using publicly available information by establishing reference points in the game videos and comparing them to a referee of known height.
Statistical Analyses
Our goal was to estimate the effect of the absolute relative height of the players (compared to the height of the referee) on the number of foul calls called by each referee. We followed a generalized linear model approach and estimated the following model:
The outcome variable is the number of calls made by each referee, is the number of games refereed by each referee, is the mean relative height of the victims across all the calls of a referee and,	is the mean relative height of the perpetrators across all the calls of a referee. For both mean relative heights the average values were used for the analysis. The generalized linear model was estimated using GLM with Poisson distribution and log-link function. All analyses were performed with the software R (37).
Results

279

Analysis on the Heights

Overall, the data of 8,641 foul situations show that the victims are on average
196.26cm tall whereas the perpetrators are on average 197.20cm tall (see Table 1).
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics for the heights of victim, perpetrator and referee in all
included foul situations (N = 8641)
	Victim height in cm	Perpetrator height in cm	Referee height in cm	
Mean	196.26	197.20	183.64	
Std. Deviation	8.99	8.49	6.97	
Minimum	173.00	173.00	168.00	
Maximum	221.00	221.00	195.00	
A linear regression was used to investigate any statistical difference in height between perpetrator, referee and victims. The coefficient of the model found that the referees were significantly shorter than the perpetrators ( = 13.45, SE = 1.54, t = -8.72, df = 564 , p < .001), and that there was not a significant difference between the victims and perpetrators ( = 0.07, SE = .73, t = -0.09, df = 564 , p = 0.93). This indicates that referees generally are shorter than players. Table 2 demonstrates a detailed overview of the height comparisons between victims, perpetrators and referees.
Table 2

292

Frequencies and percentages of height comparisons between victim, perpetrator and referee for each foul situation (N = 8641)
victim = victim < victim
perpetrator	391 (4.53%)	18	(0.21%)	528 (6.11%)
= perpetrator	39 (0.45%)	4	(0.05%)	118 (1.37%)
< perpetrator	716 (8.29%)	100	(1.16%)	6727 (77.85%)	937 (10.84%)
161 (1.86%)
7543 (87.29%)	
1146 (13.26%) 122 (1.41%) 7373 (85.33%)	8641	
Number of Foul Calls

293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312

Table 3 displays the parameters of the model, with the	column indicating
the values of the parameters associated with each variable as expressed in the model equation. All model parameters were found to be statistically significant. Specifically, the parameter estimates for ,	and their interaction are the ones related to the
hypothesis of the study. The parameter	(	-0.0570, SE = 0.0171, z = -3.330, p <
.001) indicates that as the average distance between the victim height and the referee's height increases, the expected number of foul calls decreases. This suggests that referees call more fouls when the victims are of a similar height compared to when the victims are of a different height. In contrast, the parameter estimate for 0.0170, z = 5.461, p < .001) suggests that as the average distance between the perpetrator s the number of foul calls increases, indicating that taller perpetrators, in relation to the referee, tend to receive more foul calls. Finally, the interaction term	-0.0007, SE = 0.0003, z = -2.237, p = .025)
indicates that when the height distance of both players increases from the referee, the number of foul calls decreases. This suggests that the relationship between the height difference of and the perpetrators heights increase relative to the referee.
Table 3
Parameter estimates
Effect	Estimate	SE	z	p	
(Intercept)	3.6859***	0.098	37.56	<.001	
Ngame	0.0695***	0.002	38.438	<.001	
victim	-0.0570**	0.017	-3.330	<.001	
perpetrator	0.0929***	0.017	5.461	<.001	
perpetrator x victim	-0.0007*	0.0003	-2.237	0.025	

Note. Significance levels: *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05. SE = standard error; z = z-score; p = p-value.
Figure 1 represents the prediction of the models for the quartiles of the absolute average perpetrator height.
INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
All parameter findings taken together, as shown in Figure 1, further suggest that a perpetrator who is taller than the referee receives more fouls if the height of his corresponding victim is more similar to the height of the referee (i.e., shorter).
Discussion
To this end, we analyzed all fouls that had been called in more than 200 regular season games in relation to the height of the involved players and the referee. We hypothesized that in contact situations between two players of different heights, referees were more likely to favor players whose height was closer to their own. Given that referees are generally shorter than basketball players, we consequently expected a height bias: a general inclination towards the favoring of shorter players, i.e., the tendency to call more fouls on taller players due to the significant difference in average height between referees and basketball players. Results indicated that this, indeed, is so, revealing that referees call more fouls on players whose height diverges from their own. Specifically, more fouls were observed when perpetrators

336

shorter than the perpetrators). For instance, when the referee was 5cm shorter than the player committing the foul and the same height as the player being fouled, the referee was expected to call 19 more fouls compared to scenarios where both players are 5cm taller than the referee. Conversely, when the fouled player was 5cm taller than the referee and the player committing

337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361

the foul is the same height as the referee, 19 fewer fouls were expected to be called by the referee compared to scenarios where both players were 5cm taller than the referee.
In summary, this outcome reinforces existing evidence that sport officials decisions can be influenced by cues unrelated to the foul itself, such as the color of the athlete uniform [13]	[7] or crowd noise [5] and is consistent with previous research on
the impact of player height on refereeing decisions, confirming a height bias in foul calls in both soccer and basketball [15,16]. This study also challenges the existing accounts to explain the potential underlying mechanism. Van Quaquebeke and Giessner [16] suggested that judgment and decision-making processes are influenced by an embodied association between body height and dominance, implying that physical attributes like height affect perceptions of others. Contrarily, Gift and Rodenberg [15] based their hypotheses on the so-called
[38]
perceived tendency to overcompensate for a lack of height through overly aggressive or assertive behavior. However, neither study directly investigated the interaction between
s in foul situations, nor did they explore the possibility of the effect occurring in the other direction.
Our findings are among the first to indicate that sport officials decision making may be influenced by their own physical features and motor experiences, suggesting that officials with a keen awareness and understanding of their own kinematics, morphology and movements may be more inclined to call fouls in favor of players of similar height. Thus, sport officials' decision-making might not only be influenced by relying on specific motor experience, as shown by Pizzera [30], Renden et al. [31] and Del Campo et al. [32], who demonstrated that	improves when they can draw from their own stored sensorimotor experience. Furthermore, the simulation process may be more effective when individuals can draw from similar kinematic experiences. This, in turn,
suggests that when sport officials have personal experience with the types of movements they are observing, their sensorimotor systems may better identify distinct cues, potentially leading to more accurate decisions in foul situations. While this study did not determine whether the foul decisions were indeed more accurate, it opens a topic for future research: to assess whether officials with different kinematic features judge foul situations differently or more accurately.
Given the present data, however, we are unable to ultimately determine the underlying mechanisms responsible for the effect. Although mirror neuron activity has been documented in numerous studies [25,26,29], the exact content of simulation to this day remains unclear.
To ascertain whether a sport official
fact, responsible for biases in their officiating and whether this simulation process is executed better by a person with more similar anthropometric features therefore should be subject of future studies. These could more concretely examine whether sport official self-stored experiences enhance their ability to anticipate and simulate athletes
due to an increased understanding of, for example, how forces impact individuals of similar height and how to manage body sway, center of gravity and other related factors. Future studies could aim to delve deeper into the simulation mechanism and investigate whether participants of similar height are better at discriminating others movements compared to those with a significant height difference. This might help illuminate the currently obscure aspects of the simulation mechanism and examine in more detail how simulation might affect individuals, depending on how similar in height they might be.
While this research points to promising directions for future studies, the current findings also merit further discussion particularly in terms of their practical implications. The FIBA rulebook [39] instructs referees to avoid unnecessarily interrupting the flow of the

386

game to penalize incidental personal contact unless it puts the responsible player at an 
advantage or disadvantages their opponent. However, players like Zach Edey may feel disadvantaged if fouls against them repeatedly go uncalled while they are seemingly penalized for every minor infraction. Some might argue that an additional foul or two on the taller players of the team might not significantly impact the course of a game, or that the height advantage in certain situations (such as rebounding or shot blocking) could be systematically offset by referees, thereby justifying this perceived disadvantage. This attempt to level the playing field could in fact be another possible explanation for the documented effect. Referees, consciously or subconsciously, may perceive taller players as having inherent advantages and, motivated by a desire to maintain parity among players of varying physical attributes, might therefore scrutinize taller players more closely. Although the assumption that referees aim to level the playing field has not been examined directly, research on factors influencing in-game decisions by referees supports this notion. Plessner & Betsch [9], for example, demonstrated that refereeing decisions were impacted by events occurring during the contest itself, showing a negative relationship between successive penalty decisions for the same team. Referees were less likely to award a team another penalty if they had already awarded one, while a positive correlation was found between successive penalties involving both teams, suggesting a balancing effect in their decisions. Similarly, evidence indicates that referees are more likely to extend extra playing time to the home team if it is trailing than if it is leading [6,40,41].
A practical implication of the present findings is the importance of raising awareness about the potential for bias in officiating decisions. A growing body of research has explored interventions aimed at mitigating judgment biases [42,43]. One approach that has shown promise involves increasing individuals' awareness of how bias can influence their decision making, thereby enabling more deliberate and reflective judgments. Theoretical models of

411

biased decision making emphasize that recognizing the source of bias is a critical first step

412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436

toward reducing its impact [44]. Empirical studies support this view: interventions that make individuals aware of their cognitive biases have been shown to reduce biased behaviour [45,46]. For example, in the context of professional basketball, one study found that media coverage of racial bias among NBA referees led to increased awareness and a subsequent reduction in biased calls [47
meaningful step toward safeguarding the integrity and fairness of competitive sport.
Despite the promising findings, this study has several limitations that must be acknowledged. Basketball referees consider various cues and factors when making decisions, including player movements, positioning, and the overall context of the game [48]. Height is just one of the many factors to be considered when making a decision. However, this study analyzed foul decisions of an entire basketball season, irrespective of their level of ambiguity, and consequently, the data set likely also included instances that involved clear, indisputable
with the hips. It is reasonable to assume that in cases of obvious rule violations, sport officials decisions are unlikely to be influenced by subtle cues such as height, which may only become relevant in more ambiguous situations where the primary decision-making cues are not clear. Including all foul decisions might have therefore diluted the impact of height bias on officiating decisions, whereas analyzing only ambiguous calls could provide a clearer picture of the role of height in decision making. To address this limitation, future studies could focus specifically on ambiguous foul calls which would allow for a more nuanced analysis of the role of height bias in sport official decision making. Another limitation is that this study solely included foul calls but did not include non-calls where fouls had been performed but no call had been made. Including such non-calls in the study could provide a more comprehensive understanding of officiating decision-making by capturing potential biases not only in active foul calls but also in situations where fouls are overlooked. This
could help identify whether sport officials' tendencies extend to their omissions as well as their actions, offering a fuller picture of how height or other factors might influence officiating decisions. Importantly, without a measure of decision accuracy or data on noncalled incidents, it is not possible to determine whether the observed patterns reflect a systematic deviation or simply accurate officiating of more frequent infractions. Similarly, contact from taller players may be more visible to referees due to longer limb movements or areas referees are trained to monitor closely. In contrast, shorter players may be less likely to violate "cylinder" rules, simply due to their stature and body positioning. Future research should therefore examine not only whether differences exist in how decisions are made, but also whether these decisions align with objective assessments of correctness. Further, we have no way of directly testing the underlying mechanisms responsible for this bias. Simulation theory offers a possible explanation, but the extent to which sport officials past motor experiences influence their ability to simulate a	actions and how this subsequently affects their judgment and decision-making processes is yet to be determined. Given the multitude of factors impacting a
[1], it is impossible to rule out other contributing elements. For instance, sport officials may possess an inherent bias towards individuals who share similar physical attributes, such as height. This bias could stem from in-group favoritism, a social psychological phenomenon where individuals favor and support in-group over out-group members [48,49]. Furthermore, the data in this study are correlational in nature. To draw causal conclusions effect of height on officiating decisions, future research would need to include an experimental manipulation of referee height. Additionally, in our high-level sample, few referees were taller than the players, limiting our ability to examine both directions of the effect (i.e., referees being taller vs. shorter than players) with sufficient group

461

sizes. This limitation could be addressed in future research involving youth basketball games, 
where referees are often closer in height to players who are still in their growth and development phase.
Despite these limitations, the current findings offer initial evidence of a systematic pattern in officiating that may be influenced by physical differences between referees and players, and contribute to our understanding of perceptual and cognitive processes in sports officiating. This study highlights the influence of sport officials' physical attributes and motor experiences on their decision making, revealing a height bias where referees are more likely to call fouls against players that do not resemble their own height. As most players are taller than the referees, this usually results in more fouls being called against taller players. This may be due to an embodied simulation mechanism, aligning with prior research on sport official biases. While this study does not allow a deeper look into underlying mechanisms, the findings suggest a need for further research and awareness to ensure fair officiating in sports.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
1.
Association Football Refereeing. Int J Sport Psychol. 2006;37(2 3):99 120.
2.
Decisions: An Experimental Study on the Concept of Game Management. J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2006 Mar 1;28(1):93 9.

485
486

3.

Plessner H, Haar T. Sports performance judgments from a social cognitive perspective.
Psychol Sport Exerc. 2006;7(6):555 75.

4.		Hancock DJ, Pizzera A. The psychology of sport officiating. Psychol Sport Exerc. 2025 Sep 1;80:102899.
5.		Nevill A, Holder R, Gill J, et al. A comparison of methods for analyzing competition performance in sports. J Sports Sci. 2002;20(3):231-243.
6.		Sutter M, Kocher MG. Favoritism of agents	J Econ Psychol. 2004;25(4):461 9.
7.	 decisions of association football referees. J Sports Sci. 2002;20(12):991 1000.
8.		Messner C, Schmid B. Über die Schwierigkeit, unparteiische Entscheidungen zu fällen. Z Für Sozialpsychol. 2007 Jan;38(2):105 10.
9.		Lex H, Pizzera A, Kurtes Eur J Sport Sci. 2015 Jul 4;15(5):424 8.
10.		Plessner H, Betsch T. Sequential Effects in Important Referee Decisions: The Case of Penalties in Soccer. J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2001 Sep;23(3):254 9.
11.		Unkelbach C, Memmert D. Game management, context effects, and calibration: The case of yellow cards in soccer. J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2008;30(1):95 109.
12.		Frank MG, Gilovich T. The Dark Side of Self- and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1988;54(1):74 85.
13.		Tiryaki MS. Assessing whether black uniforms affect the decisions of Turkish soccer Percept Mot Skills. 2005 Feb;100(1):51 7.
14.		Fezler D. Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter urging for foul calls on Zach Edey. Sports Illustrated [Internet]. 2023 Jan 25 [cited 2025 Jun 9]. Available from: https://www.si.com/college/purdue/basketball/purdue-basketball-coach-matt-painter- urging-for-foul-calls-on-zach-edey
15.		Gift P, Rodenberg RM. Napoleon Complex: Height Bias Among National Basketball Association Referees. J Sports Econ. 2014 Oct 1;15(5):541 58.
16.		van Quaquebeke N, Giessner SR. How embodied cognitions affect judgments: height- related attribution bias in football foul calls. J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2010;32(1):3 22.
17.		Fiske ST. Thinking is for doing: portraits of social cognition from daguerreotype to laserphoto. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1992;63(6):877 89.
18.		Lakoff G, Johnson M. The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cogn Sci. 1980;4(2):195 208.
19.		
520
521

Raab M. Motor heuristics and embodied choices: how to choose and act. Curr Opin Psychol. 2017 Aug 1;16:34 7.
20.		
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562

Pizzera A. The role of embodied cognition in sports officiating. Mov Sport Sci-Sci Mot. 2015;(87):53 61.
21.		Gallese V. Embodied simulation: From neurons to phenomenal experience. Phenomenol Cogn Sci. 2005 Jan;4(1):23 48.
22.		Jeannerod M. Neural simulation of action: A unifying mechanism for motor cognition. NeuroImage. 2001.
23.		Schütz-Bosbach S, Prinz W. Perceptual resonance: action-induced modulation of perception. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007;11(8):349 55.
24.		Prinz W. Perception and Action Planning. Eur J Cogn Psychol. 1997 Jun;9(2):129 54.
25.		Calvo-Merino B, Glaser DE, Grèzes J, Passingham RE, Haggard P. Action observation and acquired motor skills: an fMRI study with expert dancers. Cereb Cortex. 2005;15(8):1243 9.
26.		Albergoni A, Biggio M, Faelli E, Pesce A, Ruggeri P, Avanzino L, Bove M, Bisio A. Sensorimotor expertise influences perceptual weight judgments during observation of a sport-specific gesture. Front Sports Act Living. 2023;5:1148812. doi:10.3389/fspor.2023.1148812
27.		Calvo-Merino B, Ehrenberg S, Leung D, Haggard P. Experts see it all: configural effects in action observation. Psychol Res. 2010;74(5):400-406.
28.		Casile A, Giese MA. Nonvisual motor training influences biological motion perception. Curr Biol. 2006;16(1):69-74.
29.		Loula F, Prasad S, Harber K, Shiffrar M. Recognizing people from their movement. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2005;31(1):210.
30.		Pizzera A. Gymnastic judges benefit from their own motor experience as gymnasts. Res Q Exerc Sport. 2012 Dec;83(4):603 7.
31.		Renden PG, Kerstens S, Oudejans RR, Cañal-Bruland R. Foul or dive? Motor contributions to judging ambiguous foul situations in football. Eur J Sport Sci. 2014;14(Suppl 1):S221 S227.
32.		Luis Del Campo V, Morenas Martín J, Pizzera A. Effects of past and current motor experiences as soccer players in decision-making of amateur soccer referees. Int J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2022 Jul 4;20(4):1102 16.
33.		Allard P, Nault ML, Hinse S, LeBlanc R, Labelle H. Relationship between morphologic somatotypes and standing posture equilibrium. Ann Hum Biol. 2001 Jan 1;28(6):624 33.
34.		Lee AJY, Lin WH. The Influence of Gender and Somatotype on Single-Leg Upright Standing Postural Stability in Children. J Appl Biomech. 2007 Aug 1;23(3):173 9.
35.		Alonso AC, Luna NMS, Mochizuki L, Barbieri F, Santos S, Greve JMD. The influence of anthropometric factors on postural balance: the relationship between body composition and posturographic measurements in young adults. Clinics. 2012 Jan 1;67(12):1433 41.
36.		Qualtrics [Internet]. 2023. Available from: https://www.qualtrics.com
37.		R Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Internet]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing; 2023. Available from: https://www.R-project.org
38.		Fleming N. Short man syndrome is not just a tall story [Internet]. The Telegraph. 2008. Available from: https://telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3336044/Short-man-syndrome- isnot-just-a-tall-story.html
39.		FIBA. Official Basketball Rules 2022 [Internet]. 2022. Available from: https://www.fiba.basketball/documents/official-basketball-rules/current.pdf
40.		Dohmen TJ. The Influence of Social Forces: Evidence from the Behavior of Football Referees. Econ Inq. 2008;46(3):411 24.
41.		Garicano L, Palacios-Huerta I, Prendergast C. Favoritism Under Social Pressure. Rev Econ Stat. 2005 May 1;87(2):208 16.
42.		Gollwitzer PM. Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. Am Psychol. 1999;54(7):493 503.
43.		Lerner JS, Tetlock PE. Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychol Bull. 1999;125(2):255 75.
44.		Axt JR, Lai CK. Reducing discrimination: A bias versus noise perspective. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2019;117(1):26 49.
45.		Golding JM, Fowler SB, Long DL, Latta H. Instructions to disregard potentially useful information: The effects of pragmatics on evaluative judgments and recall. J Mem Lang. 1990;29(2):212 27.
46.		Schul Y. When warning succeeds: The effect of warning on success in ignoring invalid information. J Exp Soc Psychol. 1993;29(1):42 62.
47.		Pope DG, Price J, Wolfers J. Awareness reduces racial bias. Manag Sci. 2018;64(11):4988-95.
48.		Balliet D, Wu J, De Dreu CK. Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: a meta-analysis. Psychol Bull. 2014;140(6):1556.
49.		Jin K sun, Baillargeon R. Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2017 Aug;114(31):8199 204.