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The influence of players' standard of competition on referees' decision making was investigated. Standard of competition was examined by studying 30 handball matches, 15 at League and 15 at National standard. At both standards, we examined two types of refereeing decision (sporting and disciplinary) after transgressions that varied in ambiguity. The results indicated that referees made more lenient decisions at higher standards of competition, but this tendency depended on the type of decision being made and ambiguity in the offence. The hypothesis that referees use standard of competition as a judgemental heuristic, but in varying ways, was supported.

The aim of the present study was to verify that the level of tolerance for aggression is higher in a collective context than in an individual context (polarization effect), and to test the association between moral disengagement, team and self-attitudes toward aggression, and tolerance and realization of aggressive acts in Swiss male soccer and ice hockey. In individual or collective answering conditions, 104 soccer and 98 ice hockey players viewed videotaped aggressive acts and completed a questionnaire, including measures of the perceived legitimacy of videotaped aggression, of the teammates, coach, and self attitudes toward transgressions (modified TNQ), of the moral disengagement in sport (modified MDSS-S), and of self-reported aggressive behavior. A multilevel analysis confirmed a strong polarization effect on the perception of instrumental aggression, the videotaped aggressive acts appearing more tolerated in the collective than in the individual answering condition. Using a structural equation modeling, we found that the moral disengagement, which mediates the effects of perceived coach and ego attitudes toward transgressions, correlates positively with the tolerance of hostile aggression within teams, and with the level of aggressive acts reported by the participants. Aggr. Behav. Aggr. Behav. 42:123-133, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.