Developing and testing the Expanded Sport Official’s Decision-Making Model

The present study tests the new Expanded Sport Official’s Decision-Making Model (ESODMM), which expands the existing Official’s Specific Decision-Making Model by integrating emotion, anticipation, and information-processing into its conceptual framework. To test the role of anticipation and emotion in the ESODMM, 56 basketball officials (32 high school level, 24 NCAA division 1) were assigned to either high (crowd noise and peer evaluation) or low (no crowd noise or peer evaluation) stress conditions and asked to make calls on occluded or non-occluded basketball video clips while wearing eye tracking glasses. MANOVA and ANOVA analyses revealed that officials in the high-stress condition experienced more stress resulting in less accurate decisions than those in the low-stress condition. Additionally, experienced officials made more accurate decisions and goal-directed gaze behaviours than novices did. Moreover, decision-making accuracy was lowest in the occluded trial block. The findings support the important role that emotion, information-processing, and anticipation have in officials’ decision-making. Implementing the ESODMM can provide researchers with a comprehensive model to guide their understanding of officials’ decision-making processes.