Introduction to the special issue: Officials in sports

The history of sport referees, judges, and officials, began with the first Olympic Games in the Antiquity. The Hellanodikai, the judges of the Greeks, had many roles including; selecting the athletes, supervising their training, coordinating the drawing lots, refereeing the competitions and judging and deciding on sanctions if it was required (Bagnall, Brodersen, Champion, Erskine, & Huebner, 2013). Nowadays, thousands of sports officials (referees, judges, and umpires) work every week in the majority of competitive sports. In recent years, the amount of research within the area has increased, and the empirical evidence accumulated reflects the diversity of refereeing as well as its complexity (Dosseville & Laborde, 2011). Pioneer work in the seventies focused on basketball referees’ personality (Alker, Straub, & Leary, 1973; Fratzke, 1975). From this, sport officials came to forefront of attention for researchers. Around 60 scientific papers were published between 1980 and 1990 with a focus on personality (Ittenbach & Eller, 1989), stress (Kaissidis & Anshel, 1993; Taylor, Daniel, Leith, & Burke, 1990), the decision-making process and biases that may influence it (Larsen & Rainey, 1991; Ste-Marie & Lee, 1991). During this time two books were published, summarizing guidance for physical and psychological training of referees, and analyzing the communication with the other sport actors (Grunska, 1999; Weinberg & Richardson 1990). From 2000 on, the literature started to grow and focused on aspects linked to judgment and decision-making as well as on physical and physiological dimensions. Expertise (MacMahon & Plessner, 2008; Ollis, MacPherson, & Collins, 2006; Ste-Marie, 2003), previous experience (Catteeuw, Helsen, Gilis, &Wagemans, 2009; MacMahon, Helsen, Starkes, Weston, 2007; Pizzera & Raab, 2012), stress and coping strategies (Louvet, Gaudreau, Menaut, Genty, & Deneuve, 2009; Voight, 2009) and visual perception of referees (Helsen, Gilis, & Weston, 2006; Oudejans et al., 2000) were thus investigated and debated amongst the scientific community. This work in psychology allowed for the investigation of influencing internal and external factors including: stereotypes (Souchon, 2011; Souchon et al., 2009), reputation (Findlay &