How do members of minority groups update their beliefs about how the majority group perceives them when they receive direct social feedback from either in-group or out-group sources? Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and System Justification Theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) offer conflicting perspectives. While SIT suggests that individuals prioritize positive feedback from their own group and resist out-group input (an in-group positivity bias), SJT posits that members of lower-status groups may question overly favorable evaluations of their group (an in-group negativity bias).
-- Using the paradigm developed by Korn et al. (2012), the present study examines how Chinese sojourners in Germany process social feedback about their meta-perceptions. In a pilot study, Chinese (n=50) and German (n=50) participants provide trait ratings in response to the question, “How do most Germans view Chinese?” These ratings then serve as social feedback in a 2 (Feedback Desirability: Desirable vs. Undesirable) × 2 (Feedback Source: Chinese vs. German) repeated-measures design with a new sample of Chinese participants (n=150), who update their initial ratings after receiving feedback. It is hypothesized that SIT will prevail over SJT, such that an interaction between feedback desirability and feedback source will drive social feedback processing: participants will more readily incorporate desirable feedback from Chinese peers (in-group positivity bias).