Patriotic bias in sports judging – A matter of juror and athlete socialization at the national level

Abstract

This study examines the causes of patriotic bias in sports judging, where jurors favor athletes from their own country. It uses Olympic scoring data from figure skating and snowboarding, which represent sports with distinct socialization contexts. It tests the hypothesis that shared national-level socialization between jurors and athletes fosters such bias. This shared socialization is conceptualized as arising from frequent interactions, including jurors’ advisory roles during training, shared cultural influences, and the jurors’ engagements with their respective national federations. The study thus contributes to understanding the socio-cultural roots of judging bias and provides insights for the development of judging frameworks and interventions aimed at reducing patriotic bias and safeguarding judging integrity. The findings demonstrate a significantly stronger patriotic bias among figure skating jurors, linked to their national-level socialization, whereas snowboarding jurors – socialized and operating within a more globalized environment – exhibited negligible bias. These results support the hypothesis that national-level socialization fosters patriotic bias, which may arise through both deliberate and inadvertent mechanisms. Accordingly, conventional countermeasures such as sanctions or rule modifications may prove insufficient to fully mitigate this bias, highlighting the need for structural reforms within judging systems to preserve the integrity of sports performance judging.