1. Introduction
Mood profiling has been used in sports since the 1970s, when Morgan [
1] hypothesised that mood profiles may be predictive of athletic success. Most sports performance research, including mood research, has focused on athletes and coaches [
2,
3]. However, there is another group of participants who have a significant impact on sports, the officials. Sports officials (i.e., referees, umpires, or judges) are expected to perform to a high standard under the pressure of expectation from participants, fans, and sponsors in complex situations, which often leads to heightened physical and cognitive load [
4].
Moods have been conceptualised as a collection of feelings that often lack identifiable triggering events and are less intense and tend to persist longer than emotions [
5]. Moods can be described as bi-dimensional, having valence that varies from positive to negative and arousal that varies from activation to deactivation [
6]. The mood of individuals is typically assessed using a self-report scale such as the Profile of Mood States (POMS) [
7] or its derivative, the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) [
8,
9]. Mood profiling is a process in which an individual’s mood scores are plotted against test norms and presented graphically [
10]. This profile can then be used to identify commonly occurring patterns of mood responses and to assess relationships between moods, performance, and psychological wellbeing [
10,
11,
12].
Morgan [
13,
14] proposed that athletic success was strongly associated with positive mental health and found POMS scores to be predictive of athletic success. Morgan [
1] reported that, when plotted against normative data, the mood profiles of athletes chosen to represent the USA in wrestling at the 1972 and 1976 Olympic games resembled an iceberg, with the score for vigour above the mean population score of 50 and the scores for tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion below the mean. The iceberg profile was the first mood profile to be used to predict successful athletic performance. The subsequent development of the BRUMS specifically for the purpose of assessing mood states in sport-related contexts using tables of normative values based on athletic samples [
8,
9] enhanced the utility of mood profiling in sport.
Mood profiling has been applied in a variety of contexts, such as screening for the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder in a military population [
15], monitoring the wellbeing of cardiac rehabilitation patients [
16], and identifying increased risk of psychopathology during COVID-19 restrictions [
17]. However, the use of mood profiling remains most prevalent in sporting contexts. In addition to the iceberg profile, several additional mood profiles have been documented. The Everest profile [
10], for example, is represented by near maximum scores for vigour and near minimum scores for depression, tension, confusion, anger, and fatigue, and it is proposed to be a good indicator of superior sports performance. Conversely, the inverse iceberg profile is characterised by below-average scores for vigour and above-average scores for depression, tension, confusion, anger, and fatigue, and it is seen as an indicator of poor sports performance and the risk of impaired mental health [
18,
19]. Four further profiles were identified in the general population; the inverse Everest, shark fin, submerged, and surface profiles [
20]. These four profiles plus the iceberg and inverse iceberg profiles have been identified in multiple cultural and language contexts, using sport and community samples [
21,
22].
Officials are key participants in team sports [
4,
23]. They can be classified as interactors (e.g., referees or umpires), reactors (e.g., tennis line judges), or monitors (e.g., dressage or gymnastics judges) with the classification based on the number of athletes to be monitored and the interaction required with athletes [
24]. The developmental pathways and motivations of sport participants who later became officials were explored by Hancock and his associates [
25], who reported that sport participants typically began and continued officiating for intrinsic, sport, and social reasons. Many athletes choose to officiate to prolong their career in the sport, because of encouragement from significant social and family members, or to participate at higher levels than they had as an athlete.
Like athletes, elite-level officials are expected to acquire and apply in-depth knowledge about their role in complex situations and adapt to changing needs as they progress in their sport, such as increased physical demands, greater pressure to perform, changing contexts, and changing athlete playing strategies [
4]. Officials are often treated poorly with attitudes that range from indifference to hostility, death threats, and violence [
26,
27]. Consequentially, officials require considerable resilience [
26], a quality found in individuals with robust mental health. The combination of increased performance expectations, scrutiny, and criticism suggested a need for research into the mental health of sports officials. Given that mood profiling serves a dual role of providing both an indicator of mental health status [
11,
12] and a predictor of performance in sports [
28,
29], research using mood profiling among sports officials appears to be appropriate, and Australian softball umpires (interactor-class officials) were selected as the participants in this study.
Softball umpires are appointed to games in roles broadly categorised as plate or field umpires. Plate umpires are initially positioned behind the home plate and a player known as the “catcher”. The plate umpire is required to judge whether each unhit pitch (a ball thrown with an underarm action by a player called the “pitcher” to the catcher) is either a “strike” or a “ball”. A batter who accumulates three strikes is called out; a batter who accumulates four balls is awarded first base. The umpire behind the plate adjudicates on relevant plays (such as batter and runners being safe or out) and manages issues beyond plays, such as deciding rule interpretations and player substitutions. Field umpires are positioned initially at bases (i.e., first, second, or third base) or in the outfield and adjudicate on plays in their vicinity, such as a runner being safe or out, or a batter being out after a catch was completed [
30]. A more detailed overview of softball can be found at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softball (accessed on 9 December 2023).
Previous research has identified significant sex and age differences in reported mood. Terry and his associates [
31] reported that females scored higher than males in tension, fatigue, and confusion dimensions, and males scored higher than females in anger and vigour. No sex differences were found for depression. Various age group differences were reported. Vigour scores for participants aged 46–55 years and aged 56+ years were higher than those for participants aged 25–45 years. Fatigue and confusion scores were lower for participants aged 56+ years than for participants aged 18–24 years. The 46–55 years group scored higher in depression than those aged 18–24 years [
31]. The influence of these demographic variables will similarly be examined in this study. Further, the influence on mood responses of key situational variables, novel and specific to softball umpires, is of considerable interest; these are their role as a plate or field umpire and the umpire accreditation level they have achieved.
The extensive literature on the impact of mood on athletic performance and the need for further psychological research involving sports officials [
23] prompted the present study, which was the first to examine mood factors and the performance of softball umpires. Based on prior findings [
11,
12,
28,
29], it was hypothesised that participants would report a consistent mood profile synonymous with positive mental health (H1) and that mood would be predictive of umpiring performance (H2). Also, based on previous research [
31], it was hypothesised that male umpires would report more positive moods than female umpires (H3) and that older umpires would report more positive moods than younger umpires (H4). Although the effects on mood of umpire role and accreditation level have not previously been investigated, it was hypothesised (H5) that plate umpires would report higher tension scores than field umpires due to the greater cognitive demands of the role, and (H6) that umpires achieving higher accreditation levels would report more positive mood than those at lower accreditation levels, due to greater experience in the role. Therefore, the aims of the study were (a) to investigate the mood profiles of Australian softball umpires officiating at a national championship in relation to umpiring performance and mental health status and (b) to assess the influence of participant sex, age, umpire role, and accreditation level.
4. Discussion
The present study took the approach of assessing the mood profiles of softball umpires, in a similar manner to studies of athlete mood profiles, with the aim of determining if their mood profiles were reflective of positive mental health and/or were predictive of umpiring performance. The study also assessed the effects of the sex and age of the umpire, position on the diamond, and accreditation level on pre-game mood. The sample of Australian softball umpires reported mood profiles that were significantly different from non-athlete mood norms. As hypothesised (H1), participants reported more positive mood profiles than the general population, with very low mean scores for depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion, indicating a link between participation in softball umpiring and positive mental health. Consistent with our hypothesis (H2), umpiring performance was shown to be correctly classified from mood scores with 75% accuracy. Low scores for tension were particularly predictive of umpiring performances being rated as a pass. Mood scores also varied according to the sex, age, position on the diamond, and accreditation level of the umpires involved in the study.
Umpiring decisions often conflict with the opinions of athletes and spectators, resulting in umpires experiencing derision and ridicule [
26], abuse, and occasionally violence [
27]. This suggests that managing anger responses is a factor in promoting good performance as an umpire. In the present sample, anger scores were uniformly low across the participants, with 99.5% of mood profiles having anger scores at or close to zero, suggestive of positive mental health. Overall, assessments of pre-game mood among softball umpires showed that participants tended to report either iceberg or submerged profiles with no reported inverse Everest, inverse iceberg, or shark fin profiles, which are proposed to reflect elevated risk of mental health issues [
11]. Hence, no evidence of mental ill-health or risks to mental health was identified in any participant.
When umpiring performance was dichotomised into pass and fail categories, participants who failed reported higher pre-game tension scores. Tension is known to affect decision making due to the increase in cognitive load, and performance is expected to suffer if the individual’s interpretation of this tension is that it will debilitate their performance [
42]. A conceptual model of mood and performance relationships in sports [
43] emphasised the interactive effects of different mood dimensions on performance. Notably, the model proposed that tension has a negative effect on performance when symptoms of depression are experienced simultaneously, whereas in the absence of any depression symptoms, tension shows an inverted-U relationship with performance (i.e., tension is facilitative of performance up to an optimum point, and thereafter, further increases in tension are debilitative of performance). Applying this model to softball umpiring, given that some level of tension is both inevitable and desirable, the interaction of symptoms of tension and depressed mood, even mild symptoms such as temporary unhappiness, has the potential to debilitate umpiring performance. For example, umpires appointed to officiate teams that had previously treated them disparagingly, had very highly skilled participants, and/or had a history of angry confrontation may experience tension accompanied by a level of depressed mood that in combination produces poor umpiring performance. The current study could be extended in the future via a qualitative investigation to clarify the thought processes and considerations underlying the observed tension scores.
The sex of the participants explained 25.7% of the overall variance in mood scores. Typically, among athletes and non-athletes, males tend to report more positive mood profiles than females [
31,
44,
45]. Counter to our hypothesis (H3), the opposite was found in our study, with significantly higher depression and lower vigour scores reported by males than by females. Given that this finding was derived from a small sample of umpires, the results may be anomalous. However, taking the results at face value, there may be a case for male umpires in particular to use evidence-based mood enhancement strategies in the pre-game period, such as listening to their favourite music or engaging in a vigorous warm-up routine [
46]. It should be noted that the BRUMS assesses depressed mood rather than clinical depression, and both male and female participants reported depression scores that were significantly below the general population means, with 96.2% of the scores below the 48th percentile.
The age of the participant accounted for 25.8% of the variance in mood scores. Older participants, aged 51+ years, reported significantly lower scores for vigour and higher scores for depression than their younger colleagues. Age-related differences in BRUMS scores have been reported previously in the literature [
31,
45], although the present results do not align closely with those prior findings and contradict our hypothesis (H4). While it could be expected that younger participants would report higher vigour scores than participants in their 50s and 60s, in relation to depression scores, the results of a large-scale study involving nearly 16,000 participants reported that BRUMS depression scores tended to decline rather than increase among those in their 50s and beyond [
31]. The present findings related to age may have been confounded by the sex of participants, given that the female participants in our sample were on average 16 years younger than the male participants, and the results for age closely mirrored the results for sex.
Regarding umpire position on the diamond, as hypothesised (H5), mean tension scores were significantly higher when the participant assumed the plate position than when the participant officiated in the field. This result was anticipated given that the number and significance of decisions made by plate umpires have a greater overall impact on game outcome than those of field umpires. The higher tension scores reported by plate umpires may possibly be facilitative of performance by helping participants maintain focus throughout a game in accordance with the theory of facilitative and debilitative anxiety [
42]. However, applying the conceptual model of mood and performance relationships described earlier [
43], the effect of tension on performance is influenced by the simultaneous presence or absence of symptoms of depressed mood. It should be noted that although tension was higher among participants performing as plate umpires than field umpires, the iceberg profile was reported by both groups, confirming that participants reported a mood profile associated with positive mental health and good performance regardless of their position on the diamond.
In relation to the umpiring accreditation level of participants, consistent with our hypothesis (H6), those at the higher accreditation levels reported significantly lower fatigue scores than those at the lower accreditation levels. Fatigue is known to impact decision making in sports by affecting attention and working memory, which are essential cognitive functions in fast-moving sports environments [
47,
48]. Participants in the study typically officiated two games daily at championships played over a 7-day period, remained at the ballpark for the majority of each day even when not umpiring, stayed in shared room accommodation (potentially affecting sleep quality and duration [
49]), and officiated in up to 13 games of 62 to 172 min in duration. This situation is very different from weekend local association or state championship events that would be more familiar to lower accredited umpires. Local/state events are of shorter overall duration (up to three days if played over a long weekend), and national games are not bound by maximum game time limits as are local and state games. In addition, with some exceptions, umpires generally have the convenience of sleeping in their own beds when officiating local and state games. As a dimension of mood, fatigue has been shown to adversely affect performance in sports [
28,
29]. In softball, fatigue may negatively impact an umpire’s ability to read the game effectively, move to optimal positions to make judgements, and correctly recall rules during pressure situations. Therefore, developing strategies to effectively manage fatigue may be a factor that contributes to softball umpires achieving higher levels of accreditation, highlighting a potential need for umpire training in recovery strategies.
We acknowledge some limitations of our study. Firstly, the relatively small number of umpires who participated in the study restricts the broad generalisation of the findings. The limited sample size is reflective (a) of softball being a minor sport in Australia with only a small number of umpires officiating at the national championships and (b) the cancellation of the softball national championships due to COVID-19 in the year following the collection of data preventing an opportunity for additional data collection. Although these two factors combined to limit the size of the participant group, we contend that the significant findings we have reported provide a valuable point of reference for future mood-related research with sport officials, especially softball umpires. Secondly, our study investigated interactor-style officials, and the results may not be relevant to monitor-style or reactor-style officials due to differences in the level of physical activity involved and the type and number of interactions with the athletes for each category of official. Future studies could involve participants from all three classification styles to increase the generalisability of findings.
The present findings may help to inform efforts by Softball Australia to improve umpire performance by developing and including psychological interventions in programs run by umpire trainers, mentors, and sport psychologists. For example, training clinics and pre-assessment events attended by umpires-in-training in preparation for presenting for assessment to the next accreditation level [
50] offer the opportunity to provide group training in evidenced-based mood regulation strategies [
46]. Umpires are already encouraged to work with mentors, and such relationships offer developing umpires one-on-one tutoring and support. Lastly, national championships, at which the umpires operate in a team-based environment, could provide opportunities for sport psychologists to engage in more advanced psychological interventions designed to help umpires improve their on-diamond performance. Softball is a relatively small sport in Australia, although that is not the case in other countries. For example, softball is a popular sport in the USA with more than 8 million participants in 2021 [
51]. It is anticipated that the results of this study and the interventions proposed would be replicable in countries with a large softball community.