Referring/umpiring certainly does help give you an appreciation of the huge effort that these officials put in and I would hope it helps most people to respect them more.
I know some people hated it but I really enjoyed cricket umpiring. You get to stand out in the sun and have plenty of opportunity to converse with the players. While the ball does fly around quickly when it is in "play" you do have time to think about your decisions and go through a mental checklist as to what you should be considering. In fact you are expected to take your time on out/not out decisions.
At the adult level I umpired you were umpiring your own team when they were batting so there was a series of unwritten rules you all stuck to just to make things fair/consistent. Some people did cross the line into cheating but I think most of us were pretty good.
Conversely I found basketball refereeing very stressful and did not enjoy it at all.