Fairness, implicit bias testing and sports refereeing: An argument for why professional sports organisations ought to promote fairness in sport through testing referees for implicit biases

Thomas Søbirk Petersen*, Søren Sofus Wichmann

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Sports referees are not always as unbiased or impartial as they ideally should be. Studies have shown, for example, that in their decisions, referees seem to be biased against people of different race, gender or height or biased in favour of the home team. There is no doubt that such partiality work against official ideals of fairness and non-discrimination in sport. The problem with this is that being affected by implicit biases potentially causes the referees to make unfair decisions, with the result that some people are penalised disproportionately within the realm of sport. In this paper, we argue that sports organisations ought to require referees to undergo implicit bias testing as part of their mandatory training, in order to gain knowledge about biases and to take the proper counter-measures to combat such biases. Finally, we present and critically discuss four objections to our argument and conclude that none of them are plausible.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of the Philosophy of Sport
Volume48
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)97-110
Number of pages14
ISSN0094-8705
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Fairness
  • Refereeing
  • Implicit bias testing
  • Sports ethics

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