Soccer refereeing and resilient behaviour: Relationships with psychological inflexibility and perfectionism

Abstract

The study analyzes how perfectionism and psychological inflexibility relate to resilience in soccer referees. Data were collected online from 199 referees (91.96% male, Mage = 28.24, SD = 8.47). Of the total sample, 73.37% were amateur and 26.63% were semi-professional or professional, with no significant differences in the scores of the three variables. Referees with low resilience reported higher psychological inflexibility, greater maladaptive perfectionism, and lower adaptive perfectionism. Participants grouped with high-medium psychological inflexibility showed a higher risk (OR = 4.079) of being in the low-resilience group compared to those with low psychological inflexibility. Linear regression models show a positive and significant predictive capacity for resilience for adaptive perfectionism (β = 0.468, p < .001), but a negative one for psychological inflexibility (β = -0.213, p = .003) and maladaptive perfectionism (β = -0.323, p < .001). The implications of these results in the sports context are analyzed.