Why the Refs Are Always Wrong
Spoiler alert: it’s not (always) the refs. Turns out, psychology has a lot to say about why it's so easy to blame officials.
Thursday night was a show-stopper for Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase. Burrow put up a ridiculous 428 yards and 4 touchdowns, connecting with Chase for a career-high 264 yards and 3 of those TDs. The dynamic duo gave the Bengals every chance against a tough Baltimore Ravens team, fighting all the way to a final-seconds 2-point conversion for the win. But Burrow’s pass fell incomplete in the end zone. Game over. Ravens escape with a 35-34 win. Or so it seemed.
Replay told a different story. It wasn’t just a errant ball or the Ravens’ lockdown defense that sealed the Bengals’ fate. Nope—this loss has “missed calls” written all over it. On that critical play, Bengals’ tight end Mike Gesicki was clearly held, and Burrow took a late hit square to the facemask. Yet, somehow, no flags. No call. Just a “better luck next time” as Bengals fans watched their hopes and dreams for the playoffs vanish, courtesy of the NFL officiating crew.
If you’re a die-hard Bengals fan (like me), you probably saw red. Another game, another set of missed calls—and this one definitely cost us the win. “The refs sold,” as the kids say. But here’s the thing: there’s actually a psychological reason behind why every ref decision feels like it’s targeting your team. Let’s dig into why these missed calls get under our skin and mess with our minds, even if (just maybe) they were legit (just not in this case).
Seeing What We Want to See
Confirmation bias. This is our tendency to see things that confirm what we already believe and ignore what contradicts those beliefs. As football fans, we start the game with a clear side, the right side, which primes us to interpret calls through a lens that favors our team. So, when the ref makes a call against us, we’re primed to see it as wrong, but when it’s in our favor, we’re much more likely to see it as fair and justified. This skewed perspective means refs will always look biased… against our team. Confirmation bias isn’t just about football – it’s a mental trick that plays out in almost every aspect of our lives. It subtly reinforces our beliefs and skews how we interpret the world. For example, in politics, confirmation bias turns into a filter that leads us to seek out news and information that aligns with our beliefs, while we conveniently dismiss anything that contradicts them.
Disposition > Situation
It’s almost automatic: someone cuts us off in traffic—What a bad driver!—we immediately think. This quick judgment isn’t just a random reaction, it’s a psychological shortcut called the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), and here’s how it works.
When we see someone’s actions, especially a negative one, we tend to assume it’s because of their character or disposition. They must be reckless, careless, clumsy, rude. This error stems from our tendency to focus on internal factors (like personality) and ignore external factors (like circumstances or the situation) when evaluating others. So, instead of thinking, maybe they’re late to get to work or they didn’t see me because I was in their blind spot, we jump straight to the conclusion that they’re just a lousy driver.
Are we always that harsh? Well, not when we make a similar mistake. If we accidentally cut someone off, we’re quick to justify it: I was distracted for a second, but I’m a good driver. This is the actor-observer bias, which lets us off the hook by attributing our own behavior to situational factors, while being quicker to blame others’ behavior on their disposition.
In sports, this means we see game officials as biased or incompetent, rather than considering that they’re making split-second decisions under intense pressure. It’s easier to believe that a ref made a bad call because they’re “clearly against us” than to consider they just had a tough angle on a fast play. This same bias makes it hard for us to see the game neutrally; we’re too focused on preserving our emotional investment to be objective. And that same bias can allow us to see the other team as dirty players or cheaters, while we view our own team as simply doing what it takes to stay safe in a violent game.
Outcome Bias: Judging the Call by What Happened Next
Outcome bias is a tricky psychological quirk that makes us judge decisions based on the outcome rather than on the quality of the decision itself. In football, if a referee’s call ends up costing your team the game, that call feels particularly egregious. The painful outcome makes us scrutinize the call more harshly and can even warp our memory of the event, as we focus on how it “unjustly” changed the course of the game. But if the same call happens earlier in the game, or if our team manages to win regardless, we’re likely to shrug it off as just part of the play. The same bias occurs when a coach goes for it on fourth down, or elects to go for two (or not) after a touchdown. If the team converts, the play looks genius; if they fail, why the heck did the coach make that risky call?
Outside of sports, outcome bias shows up all the time. If a company invests in a risky venture and it fails, we might criticize the executives for making a “poor decision,” even if they had good reasons to take the chance. Conversely, if the gamble pays off, we’ll likely praise them as visionaries. The quality of their decision-making isn’t what we’re assessing; we’re just focused on the final outcome. This tendency can lead us to unfairly judge people (and referees!) based solely on what happens afterward, instead of considering the circumstances they faced in the moment.
My Team Can’t Lose… Unless It’s the Ref’s Fault
Is my belief that the Bengals lost to the Ravens because of the missed calls self-serving bias? Maybe. Self-serving bias is our tendency to attribute positive outcomes to our own abilities and effort while blaming negative outcomes on external factors. In the case of sports fandom, it’s a way of protecting our attachment to the team. After all, if we believe in our team’s skill and effort, it’s easier to accept a loss by shifting the blame to an outside source. By zeroing in on the ref’s “bad calls,” we keep our idealized image of the team intact, and our emotional investment remains protected.
Self-serving bias is everywhere. If we study for a test and ace it, we’re likely to credit our hard work and intelligence. But if we fail, we might blame the test for being unfair, the teacher’s biases, or even just bad luck…anything but our own preparation. This mental trick helps us protect our self-esteem, just like blaming the ref shields our emotional investment in our team.
So Are the Refs Really Out to Get Us?
Probably not. They’re making real-time calls under intense pressure. But because of our biases and emotional investment, every yellow flag can feel like a personal attack. And even though I just walked through the psychology behind it all, let’s be honest: I still think those no-calls on that final play were a robbery.