Referees' Decision Making in Handball and Transgressive Behaviors: Influence of Stereotypes About Gender of Players?

We offer norm theory as a framework for developing some common ground within both feminist psychology and lesbian and gay psychology about the meaning of empirical differences between social groups. Norm theory is a social cognitive theory that predicts that empirical differences will be consistently explained by taking more typical groups (e.g., men, straight people) as implicit norms for comparison and by attributing differences to less typical groups (e.g., women, lesbians, and gay men). Results of an experiment (N = 114) are presented to show that norms shape interpretations of empirical differences between lesbian/gay and straight persons by (1) leading explanations to focus on attributes of lesbian/gay persons, and (2) leading to judgments that straight persons have less mutable attributes. Stereotypes also affected interpretations; stereotype-consistent results led to more essentialistic explanations and, when targets were female, to higher ratings of the results' importance and fundamentality. We highlight how experiments can be used to understand the process of constructing the meaning of scientific data, and make recommendations for empiricists' interpretive practices and constructionist theories in feminist psychology and lesbian and gay psychology.     

REFEREES' DECISION MAKING ABOUT TRANSGRESSIONS: THE INFLUENCE OF PLAYER GENDER AT THE HIGHEST NATIONAL LEVEL

Prior research has found that referees are harsher toward sporting offenses in regional-level matches between women than in regional-level matches between men. We tested whether this bias also occurs at a higher, national level of competition, despite the greater pressures for objectivity and fairness at this level. Referees' decisions were examined in 15 national-level handball matches between women and 15 national-level handball matches between men after transgressions that varied in severity. The results suggest that referees made harsher decisions in female than in male matches. Although more research is needed, this study supported the hypothesis that referees may use the gender of players as a powerful judgmental heuristic for deciding how to respond to aggression.     

Aggressor and victim perspective-related differences in perceived legitimacy of aggression in soccer

The purpose of this role-playing study was to explore the perceived legitimacy of aggression in soccer as a function of perspective-related differences (aggressor vs victim) and type of aggression (instrumental vs hostile). 120 soccer players watched videotaped aggressive interactions in soccer and took the perspective of the actors (aggressor then victim or the reverse). Then they rated the legitimacy of each aggressive behavior depending on its ultimate goal (instrumental then hostile or the reverse). When participants adopted the aggressor perspective, they perceived instrumental aggression as more legitimate than hostile aggression. In contrast, when participants took the perspective of the victim, no significant difference was found regardless of the type of aggression. The discussion focussed on implications and consequences of such divergences in aggressive sport situations.