TITLE:
Better than Me?! How Adolescents with and without Migration Background in Germany Perceive Each Others’ Performance in Class
AUTHORS:
Lysann Zander, Gregory D. Webster, Bettina Hannover
KEYWORDS:
Performance Evaluations; Students with Migration Background; Performance-Related Stereotypes; Social Comparison
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.5 No.1,
January
26,
2014
ABSTRACT: Is the perception of academic performance among peers biased to the
disadvantage of students with migration background (MB)? What role does
friendship among peers play for the perception of performance differences? In a
quasi-experimental study, 9th graders with and without MB
attending school in Germany rated the performance of a
comparison partner relative to their own performance after taking a mathematics
test. Degrees of correspondence between perceived and actual performance in intragroup (both partners with or
without MB) and intergroup (comparer
or partner with migration background) situations were tested in multilevel
analyses. In both intragroup
comparison situations, students evaluated their partners’ performances
benevolently. In contrast, in intergroup
situations students with MB overestimated the performance of partners without
MB relative to their own. Only students without MB judging partners with MB
showed no such positivity bias. The pattern was replicated in the sub sample of
friends, suggesting a subtle, yet powerful negative performance stereotype
towards students with MB.