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How to Write the Emory University Essays 2023-2024

Emory University has two required essay prompts for applicants, one of which is the same question for all applicants with the other having six different options for applicants to choose from. The prompts are relatively short, clocking in at 200 words and 150 words, respectively, which means every word counts towards making your application stand out.

Read these Emory essay examples to inspire your writing.

Emory University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: What academic areas are you interested in exploring at Emory University and why? (200 words)

Prompt 2:  Please answer one of the following questions: (150 words)

• Option A: Which book, character, song, monologue, or other creative work (fiction or non-fiction) seems made for you? Why?
• Option B: Reflect on a personal experience where you intentionally expanded your cultural awareness.
• Option C: Emory University aspires for all students to flourish on campus. Reflect on what flourishing at Emory means to you.
• Option D: Emory University’s core mission calls for service to humanity. Share how you might personally contribute to this mission.
• Option E: Emory University has a strong commitment to building community. Tell us about a community you have been part of where your participation helped to change or shape the community for the better.
• Option F: Reflection is a central tenet of Emory University’s values. Craft a personal email giving advice to yourself in your first year of high school.

Before You Begin

As Emory’s website states in regard to these essays, “ We encourage you to be thoughtful and not stress about what the right answer might be. We simply want to get to know you better.” This space is an opportunity for you to present yourself as a complex and unique human being.

Remember that before reading your essays and recommendations, your admissions officers will only have seen data points and test scores that describe you. While these numbers are important, you are so much more than a test score . Admission officers want to sympathize with you. They want to root for. They want you to give them a reason to admit you. And this is such a great place for you to give them one! Don’t be afraid to be your true, gloriously weird self.

It’s worth noting that the word limit for these essays is only 150 words. That’s not a lot of space, so the name of the game is brevity . This is not the place for purple prose or modifiers — instead of very hungry, try famished. Consider using sprinted instead of ran as fast as possible. It may seem like a small change, but every word is important here. We recommend that you try to get as close to the 150 word count as possible, and stay within 10-15 words of the limit. 

What academic areas are you interested in exploring in college? (200 words)

This is a very straightforward “ Why This Major? ” prompt that should follow the typical structure for an essay of this archetype. A good response needs to do three things: (1) show your interest in the major through an experience, (2) explain how the major will help you achieve your goals, and (3) demonstrate what resources at the school will help you achieve your goals.

1. Show your interest in the major

You want to start your essay by showing admissions officers your excitement and engagement in the major you have chosen. What positive (or even negative) experiences have you had with this subject that have influenced you? 

A student interested in Creative Writing might talk about how she sees characters in people walking down the street, mythical lands in the places she’s traveled, and new stories that must be told whenever she listens to conversations around her. 

A student interested in Nutrition Science could describe how understanding the science behind the food he ate through independent research helped him turn around his life and lose weight. The easiest way to convey your interest is to use a strong, detailed, and meaningful anecdote.

2. Explain how this major will help you

What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s okay to not know exactly what you want, but you should have a pretty decent idea of what field you are interested in or what type of work you see yourself enjoying. 

If you know that you want to generate cleaner forms of energy to solve the climate crisis, you would mention how majoring in Environmental Sciences will teach you not only the ecological origins of issues facing the world, but how to think creatively to develop feasible solutions. 

Maybe you’re not sure what you want to do, but you are deeply concerned by racial injustice. You could describe how the African American Studies major will allow you to learn about the history of oppression in this country, so you can gain a better understanding of where you could devote your time to do the most good one day. For this section, it’s important you establish a link between your current interests and your future.

3. Demonstrate how Emory can help you

This final step shows the admissions officers that you are genuinely interested in their school and took the time to do outside research. You will want to include resources (classes, professors, research opportunities, study abroad, extracurriculars, etc) that are specific and unique to Emory that you plan to take advantage of while on campus. Just casually mentioning three different resources you will use doesn’t add anything to your essay. You need to connect these resources to your future goals by elaborating on how they will help you. 

For example, a student who is fascinated by the economic causes of war could say they want to work with Professor Caroline Fohlin on her research of pre-war Germany to learn how the economy can predict conflicts. 

Another student who wants to apply AI to smart homes one day would write about their excitement to take the Artificial Intelligence class at Emory since it is solely dedicated to a topic they are interested in. Remember, what you choose to highlight should align with your reasons for applying to this major in the first place.

You can think of the entire essay like a bridge. On one side you have your past experiences and passion for a topic. On the other side, your future career goals and aspirations await you. The only way to get to the other side is by studying your intended major at Emory and utilizing the resources available to you, or crossing the bridge.

Prompt 2, Option A

Which book, character, song, monologue, or piece of work (fiction or non-fiction)  seems made for you why (150 words).

This is a great prompt for people who have a piece of media that they feel really strongly about—and let’s face it, most of us are at least a little obsessed with some kind of media. Think about a piece of media that you feel like you can identify with on a deep, personal level. You should then go a step further and think about why you identify so strongly with that person or thing. What does it say about you? 

Once you have your what (or who) and your why , search for an anecdote that explains your personal connection to this piece of media. For example, maybe you really identify with Katniss Everdeen (your who ) because you’re super protective of your little sister (your why ), so then you can tell the story about that time that you drove 45 minutes late at night to pick your sister up because she was uncomfortable at a party. The more specific the anecdote, the more the admissions officers will get to know you (“Wow what a responsible and selfless sibling this applicant is!”). 

A really easy trap to fall into with a prompt like this is to give the answer that you think admissions officers are looking for. Like maybe you think the admissions officers are looking for you to say that you just love studying so much , so you choose Hermione Granger even though you don’t even like Harry Potter. As in life, you should always be true to yourself in your essays because a) you’re amazing as you are, so you should let people get to know the real you and b) admissions officers will be able to identify essays that are not authentic, so writing a disingenuous response will only reflect poorly on you.

Prompt 2, Option B

Reflect on a personal experience where you intentionally expanded your cultural awareness. (150 words).

This prompt is ideal for those who have prioritize cultural sensitivity and/or have engaged with people from diverse backgrounds, as you are being asked to think about a time when you intentionally expanded your horizons, and how that deliberate action catalyzed your growth.

So, think of a time when you consciously made the decision to expand your cultural awareness. For example, perhaps your lab partner was a foreign exchange student whose first language was not English, and rather than simply getting through the term as best you could, you used it as an opportunity to recognize your privilege as a native English speaker, and appreciate the culture of a non-English speaking country.

Do be careful that you don’t come across as self-absorbed by suggesting this experience taught you everything there is to know about cultural awareness. Admissions officers aren’t expecting that, and if anything taking that stance could make you come across as naive to the world’s complexity. Instead, acknowledge that you will never know everything there is to know about other cultures, but you are committed to continually growing and learning, as that openness is what colleges do value.

Along those same lines, as you brainstorm, keep in mind that college essays, like any other genre of writing, have cliches . Many applicants have had a “voluntourism” experience — that is, a service trip that benefited the student more than the community they were visiting. Not only are voluntourism stories cliche, they can also make you sound privileged and condescending. Every admissions officer has read countless “I was there to teach them, but really they taught me” essays. 

That said, you can still talk about your service trip experience! Just try to put a unique spin on it, by focusing on a personal anecdote that only happened to you. The more specific, the better. Acknowledge your privilege and explain how you grew from it, and make sure your reader comes away actually knowing something substantive about your personality, not just that you once spent a month in Thailand.

Finally, with a prompt like this, it’s easy to accidentally spend too much of the essay talking about someone else (such as your lab partner). But remember that you only have 150 words, and ultimately you’re the one applying to Emory, so you should be the protagonist of this story. If you’re wondering if you’ve fallen into the trap of spending too much time describing someone else, look at your verbs. You should be the subject of most of those verbs, because you are the star of the story.

For example, you might consider changing “My lab partner taught me about her culture and allowed me to grow” to “By engaging in vulnerable conversations about the challenges of communicating in a new setting, I became more empathetic to the challenges non-native English speakers face every day in the United States.”

Prompt 2, Option C

Emory university aspires for all students to flourish on campus. reflect on what flourishing at emory means to you. (150 words).

This is a variation on a typical “ Why This College? ” essay, but rather than simply asking you why you want to attend Emory, the prompt instead asks what it means to “flourish” at Emory – essentially, what it means to be an Emory student. As such, this is a great prompt to answer for students with an unusually special connection to or interest in Emory, particularly those who want to showcase that Emory is one of their top choices without necessarily applying Early Decision.

This question requires both self-reflection, like any college essay, and a bit of research. Start with the self-reflection, by asking yourself what you hope to gain from your college experience. This can be at Emory specifically, or just at college in general. Are you hoping to find your passion? Do you already know what you want to do and want to connect with professors and mentors in your field of interest? Do you hope to get involved in tons of student organizations and extracurriculars on campus? Or start your own? Really imagine your dream life at college, and think about what makes you most excited to start your journey in higher education.

Once you feel like you have a grasp on why you want to attend college in general, it’s time to narrow your focus to Emory in particular. Browse the school’s website, to find different resources Emory has to help you reach your goals. For example, if you’re interested in studying film, you could write about the “Emory Cinematheque”, a series of professional film screenings open to all Emory students that features various directors, genres, and eras of film. 

To avoid simply name-dropping something that sounds cool, make sure you expand on exactly how a particular resource would help you reach your goals. In this example, you could write about how the Emory Cinematheque and related opportunities would help you synthesize your class material in new and exciting ways, and give you insight into films and media that you previously haven’t encountered.

The last and most important thing to keep in mind when answering this prompt is that you must address the word “flourishing”. Reflect on what that word means to you, and make sure to go into some depth–your goal in this essay is to distinguish yourself from other applicants, and just saying you want to get good grades won’t do that. Rather, what particular skills do you hope to gain that you haven’t already learned in high school? What experiences do you hope to have that are going to move you closer to your personal and professional goals? The more specific you can be, the better. To give you an idea of what we’re talking about here, here’s an example of what you could write, based off the example given above:

“ Engaging with resources such as the Emory Cinematheque would give me access to knowledge I wouldn’t otherwise encounter, and connect with people who can offer different perspectives on that knowledge. Flourishing on campus means being unafraid of the unknown, so that I can take full advantage of the innumerable resources available at Emory that will help me become an iconoclastic yet conscientious film director one day.”

Prompt 2, Option D

Emory university’s core mission calls for service to humanity. share how you might personally contribute to this mission. (150 words).

This is a standard “ Community Service ” essay, which asks you to share how you will embody Emory’s commitment to community service and humanitarian efforts. It’s a great option if you have a robust history with community service, or even just one experience that was highly formative.

Brainstorming Your Topic:

Research opportunities for service that already exist at Emory. The school’s website summarizes service opportunities for students, from break trips, to organized volunteer efforts in Atlanta, to service trips abroad. 

You can also think about things you’re personally invested in, even if nothing on Emory’s site quite aligns with it. For example, if you’re passionate about children’s literacy, maybe you want to talk about your goal of organizing a book drive for elementary school students in Atlanta.

Remember you’re not expected to save the world in your response. In fact, the simpler and more feasible your proposed service opportunity is, perhaps the better. Emory admissions wants to hear what you’re genuinely most interested in, and how you will actually make an impact in the Emory community, and writing about something you could realistically accomplish in college will answer those questions better than saying you’d like to wipe out world hunger.

Tips for Writing Your Essay:

Once you have an idea of what you want to write about, it’s time to organize it into a response. The best way to start is by sharing a little bit about yourself and your connection with community service. This can come in the form of a personal anecdote about a time you volunteered, an issue you’ve encountered in your community or elsewhere that has inspired you, or something you’ve found on Emory’s website that resonates with you on a personal level.

After you share your personal connection with service, tie in the initiative you brainstormed, while also explaining the importance of service to your life as a whole. Here’s an example of how to do that:

“I grew up in a town bordering the Ohio River, well-regarded as the most polluted river in America. As such, I’ve been involved with sustainability efforts since I was little. My parents would take me on river sweeps,’ where we’d travel up and down the river, clearing the water of any debris or litter we could find. At first I thought of it as just a family bonding activity, but now I see environmental service as the foundation upon which my future, and the future of the world, depends. At Emory, I will remain committed to building towards a greener future, by rallying my peers for river sweeps at the Chattahoochee, joining Emory’s various sustainability organizations such as AltKEY, and using my electives to take courses in the Environmental Sciences program. I’m ready to make an impact not just on the community where I grew up, but on Atlanta as well, and eventually, communities all across the country.”

Mistakes to Avoid:

One of the biggest mistakes students make in “Community Service” essays is talking about yourself as a savior to an “underprivileged” community or a community “in need”. Doing so paints a self-aggrandizing portrait of your efforts, which can make admissions officers question your motivation for engaging in service work. To avoid this, focus less on the differences, economic or otherwise, between yourself and the community you helped, and more on what you learned from the experience, rather than projecting an exaggerated sense of gratitude onto the recipients of your service work.

Prompt 2, Option E

Emory university has a strong commitment to building community. tell us about a community you have been part of where your participation helped to change or shape the community for the better. (150 words).

This prompt tasks you with describing a community that has both helped you grow, and given you the opportunity to shape its future. Unlike the previous prompt, this is not a “ Community Service ” essay, as your job is not to talk about how you served a community, but rather how you fit into one.

“Community” can be defined in many different ways. It can be an extracurricular that you’ve been involved with for many years, an aspect of your identity that you feel is important to you, a cultural, religious, or ethnic background you share with others, or something else you’ve sought out as a way to belong. Community is what you define it as, so don’t limit yourself when brainstorming your topic. Instead, think about what you would say to someone who asked you to introduce yourself and explain the kind of things you’re interested in. What comes to mind? What could you not imagine living without? Or, who could you not imagine living without?

You could also approach the prompt by thinking about some of your personal achievements that you’ve been proud of. This is a two-pronged prompt: you’re tasked with describing not just a community you’re a part of, but also your own contributions to that community. If anything, the second piece of the prompt is the more important one, as Emory admissions officers want to know how you’ll contribute to their overall campus community and the smaller communities that exist all across the college. So it’s imperative that whichever community you choose to write about is one that you’ve been actively engaging with for some time.

As such, it’s perhaps better to do away with writing about family or anything else that you don’t plan to take with you to Emory. While sharing that you and your family’s weekly Shabbat dinners have been a stable outlet for you to lean on your family and get in touch with your religion and wider religious community shows a thoughtful, touching sentimentality, it doesn’t actively exemplify how you’ve changed or shaped a community at large. 

That being said, perhaps you’ve invited friends from school to your dinners, or attended some of theirs. You could write about how what started as a family tradition eventually led you into a much broader community, and how you hope to attend Shabbat at Emory Hillel to broaden your Jewish community even further.

As with many other prompts, starting with an anecdote is a surefire way to quickly engage the reader and put them into your shoes. You can write about the time you found or joined the community, a time you felt most proud of your community, or a time you felt most indebted to or grateful for your community. Whatever you choose to do, remember details – what did you see, feel, taste, smell, and so on and so forth.

“ Standing on stage, with our foreheads sweating under the bright spotlights, I looked around at my castmates and felt I was home.”

Without having to say it explicitly, it’s obvious that the student’s chosen community is a theater group, and that the community gives the student a sense of great pride and comfort. Now it’s time to dive into greater detail about the significance of this community.

“But it’s hard not to think about how recently I was a freshman in the ensemble, feeling in over my head, not knowing a single soul, but feeling they were all more talented than me. But the seniors, who were all cast as leads, made it a point to make me and the other freshman feel not just included, but like an essential part of the machine.”

Here, the student starts to explain not just what the community is, but how it has helped them grow, and which lessons they’ll take from their experiences in it to college. To continue answering these more specific questions, they might go on to say something like:

“ When I became an upperclassman myself, I knew I had big shoes to fill. Whether it be by organizing movie nights outside rehearsal, having younger cast members lead warmups, or even just encouraging the cast to sit together at lunch, my goal is that whenever any member of our group looks at the stage, they’ll know they’re a part of a community that will last forever.”

Prompt 2, Option F

Reflection is a central tenet of emory university’s values. craft a personal email giving advice to yourself in your first year of high school. (150 words).

This is an open-ended prompt that gives you the chance to reflect upon your high school experience, both its triumphs and failures. The purpose of this prompt is to show the admissions reader your growth throughout high school and how you would approach it differently, if at all, if given a second chance.

The prompt may initially feel overbearingly profound, but your answer can really be quite simple. The more honest you are in your response, the more accurate a picture you will paint for Emory admissions officers, and while it may feel strange to show vulnerability to a complete stranger, remember that you’re not expected to have all the answers–you’re simply being asked to give advice to a past version of yourself.

That being said, it’s important to show perspective throughout your response. What lessons has high school taught you? Which moments were most pivotal? What aspects or experiences will you carry forward into college? Most specifically, reflect on your freshman year and what assumptions about high school you had that may have proved to be inaccurate. What fears did you have going in? Where did you find community, and how did you find it? What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? There are so many routes to follow when answering this prompt, which is exactly why it’s so important to be genuine, as if you try to write “what they want to see”, you’ll be cutting yourself off from some promising approaches.

Unlike many of the other options here, your letter requires no introduction or conclusion, connection to Emory or college in general, or acknowledgment that it’s even hypothetical. Treat the prompt as reality, and write exactly as if you were writing to your freshman year self.

Due to its informal structure, don’t be afraid to incorporate niche aspects of your personality, or even a touch of sarcasm or some other distinctive tone, into your letter. In fact, we recommend doing so as much as you can, as that will showcase a side of you that probably doesn’t show up anywhere else in your application. Whether by relying on humor, sincerity, or bluntness, make this response truly your own. Certainly, keep in mind that the people reading your essay will be complete strangers, but as long as you aren’t saying anything offensive, get in touch with what you would actually say to your past self. For example:

“Dear Robby,

I know how you must be feeling. I know, because, well, I’m you. You’re wide awake, watching Steph Curry highlights at 3 am while trying (and failing) to imagine him as an anxious teenager before his first day of high school. Unfortunately, I have to be honest with you–even now, you’re no closer to being the greatest shooter of all time. Actually, you’re probably further away… you ended up as the manager of the team, not the star. Sorry about that. But that shows what you have become: unafraid to embrace an unexpected path forward, and humble enough to contribute to things you love in a way that won’t make any headlines. So try to get some sleep tonight. Most of us will never be Steph, but nobody would ever know how many points he scored if his manager wasn’t keeping track.

Love, Yourself”

Where to Get Your Emory Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Emory essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Emerson College

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Emerson College’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts

Select-a-prompt short response.

Please respond, briefly in 100-200 words, to one of the following:

"Much of the work that students do at Emerson College is a form of storytelling. If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it and why?"

“At its best, how does community benefit the individual, the whole, or both?

Why This Major Short Response

As you know, the academic programs at Emerson College are focused on communication and the arts. Please tell us what influenced you to select your major. If you‘re undecided about your major, what attracted you to Emerson‘s programs? Please be brief.

Common App Personal Essay

The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you‘ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What will first-time readers think of your college essay?

Non-communicated judgements of, versus feedback on, students’ essays: Is feedback inflation larger for students with a migration background?

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• Published: 18 November 2021
• Volume 25 , pages 1–31, ( 2022 )

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• Anna K. Nishen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1371-1149 1 &
• Ursula Kessels   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1764-9442 1  

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When providing feedback, teachers are concerned not only with the simple transmission of information, but also with motivational and interpersonal dynamics. To mitigate these concerns, teachers may inflate feedback by reducing negative or increasing positive content. The resulting difference between initial judgments and feedback may be even more drastic for ethnic minority students: In non-communicated judgments, negative stereotypes may result in more negative judgments, whereas in feedback, concerns about being or appearing prejudiced may inflate feedback towards ethnic minority students. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of 132 German teacher students in a 2 (between subjects: feedback vs. non-communicated judgment) × 2 (within subjects: target student's migration background: Turkish vs. none) design in which participants read supposed student essays and provided their written impressions to the research team or the supposed student. Findings revealed that teacher students’ feedback was more positive than their non-communicated judgments on a multitude of dimensions. Contrary to expectations, these effects were not stronger when the student had a Turkish migration background. Instead, teacher students rated the essay of the student with a Turkish migration background more favorably both in the judgment and feedback conditions. Our results suggest that teachers adapt their initial judgments when giving feedback to account for interpersonal or motivational dynamics. Moreover, ethnic minority students may be especially likely to receive overly positive feedback. While the motivational/interpersonal dynamics may warrant some inflation in feedback, negative consequences of overly positive feedback, for which ethnic minority students may be especially vulnerable, are discussed.

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1 Introduction

Receiving feedback is an integral part of learning, informing students about where they stand in relation to specific criteria such as their learning goals (Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ). However, hearing that one’s performance was substandard can be hurtful, frustrating, and threatening to one’s self-concept and motivation (Ilies et al., 2010 ; Kerssen-Griep, 2001 ; Weidinger et al., 2016 ). With these reactions in mind, giving feedback to others can also be a challenge. When feedback contains criticism, people worry about demoralizing the recipient of feedback or hurting the relationship (Brown & Levinson, 1987 ; Rosen & Tesser, 1970 ). This may especially apply to teachers, as they are tasked not only with students’ learning but also with their social and emotional well-being.

When giving feedback, teachers aim to enable improvement, but also to motivate and encourage students (Müller & Ditton, 2014 ). Students themselves stress the importance of including positive aspects in feedback (Ferguson, 2011 ). Therefore, teachers may adapt their initial non-communicated judgments to these motivational and interpersonal demands of the feedback situation ( feedback inflation ). Importantly, teachers may have additional concerns in giving feedback to students belonging to negatively stereotyped groups. In the US, teachers are concerned with being and/or appearing to be prejudiced towards these students (Bentley-Edwards et al., 2020 ; Marshall, 1996 ). This concern may explain the more lenient feedback for Black and Latinx students that has been found in extensive research by Harber and colleagues ( positive feedback bias ; Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Harber, 1998 , 2004 ; Harber et al., 2010 , 2012 , 2019 ). While feedback towards ethnic minority students may be more positive, research shows a consistent negative bias in judgments of students’ written material submitted to third parties (e.g., Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ; Holder & Kessels, 2017 ; Glock, 2016 ; Parks & Kennedy, 2007 ) as well as in expectations more generally (e.g., Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2016 ; Wang et al., 2018 ). While feedback represents an impression that is communicated to the student and which may have been adapted to the social situation, a non-communicated judgment is an impression that is not shared with the student (but may be communicated to a third party, such as a research team). As a result of both negative biases in non-communicated judgments and the positive feedback bias, the difference between non-communicated judgments and feedback may be even more pronounced for ethnic minority students. In Germany, this may be the case for students with a Turkish migration background since negative stereotypes about their academic abilities are well-known among teacher students (e.g., Bonefeld & Karst, 2020 ; Froehlich et al., 2016 ).

The present research has two main aims: First, we examine the extent to which feedback is inflated (more positive) compared to judgments communicated to a third party rather than the student. Second, we aim to study both positive and negative biases towards ethnic minority students within the same study, enabling us to determine the importance of the context—here, whether one is addressing or simply judging the student—in eliciting biases. To address these aims, we asked teacher students to document their impressions of essays written by students with a Turkish migration background and without a migration background. Half of the participants handed in a non-communicated judgment, whereas the others believed that they were providing feedback.

2 Feedback inflation: differences between non-communicated judgments and feedback

Feedback is understood as “information provided by an agent […] regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007 , p. 81). In addition to this aspect of information transfer, feedback has a motivational character, aiming to encourage students to improve their learning and performance (Müller & Ditton, 2014 ). In our research, we define feedback as including any information regarding performance that is relayed to students, unlike non-communicated judgments, which are not shared with the students themselves. In the following, when we discuss judgments, we are referring to judgments that are not communicated to the student.

Because giving feedback is inherently a social situation (Strijbos & Müller, 2014 ), interpersonal concerns may influence the valence of feedback. In these situations, people use self-presentation strategies to achieve or maintain being liked and/or respected (Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Brown & Levinson, 1987 ; Jones & Pittman, 1982 ; Leary & Kowalski, 1990 ). In order to be liked, people are theorized to deploy ingratiation techniques, i.e., ways to establish warmth and friendliness (Jones & Pittman, 1982 ). When giving feedback, senders may ingratiate themselves by giving feedback that eliminates negative aspects and includes additional compliments to buffer their initial judgment (Cox et al., 2011 ; Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Jones & Pittman, 1982 ). Thus, the feedback teachers give to their students may be more lenient than the opinions they initially formed of students’ work.

Research has made important contributions to our understanding of feedback (e.g., Butler, 1994 ; Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996 ). To our knowledge, however, there is no research in the school context as to whether teachers inflate their feedback due to interpersonal and/or motivational concerns. However, studies suggest that this may be the case in the university setting (Colletti, 2000 ; Qadan et al., 2013 ). In particular, grades are more positive than judgments given to the research team when they are determined in a face-to-face conversation with the student (Colletti, 2000 ; Qadan et al., 2013 ), particularly because faculty avoided bringing up negative aspects (Qadan et al., 2013 ).

In organizational and social psychology, the valence of feedback in comparison to judgments has received more attention. Studies in these areas have found support for the hypothesis that people in a teaching role may be reluctant to give negative feedback and experience discomfort when they do (Ginsburg et al., 2016 ; Ramani et al., 2018 ; Waung & Highhouse, 1997 ). Generally speaking, people may carefully select the information they relay to others to adhere to politeness norms by omitting negative information strategically (Bergsieker et al., 2012 ; Brown & Levison, 1987 ). This negativity omission effect has also been demonstrated alongside sugarcoating when it comes to negative feedback, particularly for early-career medical doctors who are given feedback by supervising faculty (Ginsburg et al., 2016 ; Qadan et al., 2013 ; Ramani et al., 2018 ). Lastly, in two experiments designed to assess prosocial lying, i.e., lies intended to benefit the other, university students gave overly lenient feedback to spare another student embarrassment or pain (Lupoli et al., 2017 ).

Overall, research on negativity omission suggests that people are motivated to be liked and that this may lead to more lenient feedback by excluding negative or including positive aspects (e.g., Bergsieker et al., 2012 ; Ramani et al., 2018 ). However, an important addition to the existing literature would be to estimate how much more lenient feedback is by comparing feedback to a judgment not impacted by concerns for the recipient’s reaction. To our knowledge, only two studies have directly compared judgments and feedback, demonstrating feedback inflation (Lupoli et al., 2017 ; Qadan et al., 2013 ). While studies on negativity omission have looked at feedback situations at universities, there have been no studies in the school context. To understand whether and to what extent these dynamics play out in school, further studies involving teachers (in training) and students are required.

2.1 The impact of stereotypes in judgment and in feedback situations

Importantly, the gap between what a judgment contains and what is conveyed in feedback may be larger for those who are negatively stereotyped in the respective domain. Stereotypes are defined as “beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups” (Hilton & van Hippel, 1996 , p. 240). Based on stereotypes, varying expectations for different groups emerge, and expectations are sometimes even defined as an integral part of stereotypes (American Psychological Association, 2020 ; Pendry, 2014 ). If there exists a negative stereotype regarding academic abilities, students belonging to this negatively stereotyped group can be judged more negatively (e.g., Anderson-Clark et al., 2008 ; Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ; Glock et al., 2013 ; Quinn, 2020 ) while at the same time being given more positive feedback than their peers not belonging to a negatively stereotyped group (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Harber, 1998 , 2004 ; Harber et al., 2010 , 2012 , 2019 ). If either or both of these effects come into play, a greater difference between feedback and judgments is expected for negatively stereotyped students.

2.2 Negative bias towards ethnic minority students in judgments

A considerable amount of research has unearthed the ways in which students belonging to negatively stereotyped racial/ethnic minority groups are judged less favorably than students belonging to racial/ethnic majority groups in North America and Europe (Anderson-Clark et al., 2008 ; Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ; Glock, 2016 ; Glock et al., 2013 ; Holder & Kessels, 2017 ; Parks & Kennedy, 2007 ; Sprietsma, 2013 ; but see also Baker et al., 2015 ; Glock & Krolak-Schwerdt, 2014 ). Research regarding expectations effects has found pervasive evidence that teachers have lower expectations, e.g., regarding future performance, for students belonging to racial/ethnic minority groups compared racial/ethnic majority groups (e.g., Lorenz et al., 2016 ; McKown & Weinstein, 2008 ; Meissel et al., 2017 ; Quinn, 2020 ; Tobisch & Dresel, 2017 ; van den Bergh et al., 2010 ; Wang et al., 2018 ; for a meta-analysis, see Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2016 ; Tenenbaum & Ruck, 2007 ).

In Germany, various experiments have explored negative bias in judgments of students with a Turkish migration background, who are stereotyped as academically less capable and motivated (Bonefeld & Karst, 2020 ; Froehlich & Schulte, 2019 ; Froehlich et al., 2016 ; Kahraman & Knoblich, 2000 ). Teachers and teacher students show negative bias in judgments of work by supposed primary school students with a Turkish migration background (Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ; Glock, 2016 ; Holder & Kessels, 2017 ; Sprietsma, 2013 ). For example, teacher students graded essays of students with a Turkish migration background worse even though they found the same number of errors in students’ work (Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ).

In addition to research using materials supposedly created by students, a negative ethnic bias has also been demonstrated using experimental manipulation of vignettes (Glock, 2016 ; Glock et al., 2013 ). When a vignette described a below-average student, teachers rated ethnic minority students as less proficient in German compared to ethnic majority students (Glock, 2016 ). Teachers also recommended the highest secondary school track less often for students with a migration background and expected them to be less successful there compared to students without a migration background (Glock et al., 2013 ). Lastly, teacher students judged German proficiency scores of students with a Turkish-origin name as lower than those of students with a German-origin name (Holder & Kessels, 2017 ).

Overall, experimental evidence demonstrates a negative bias of teachers and teacher students towards students from non-majority ethnicities, and that it is present in grading, recommendations for further education, and expectations for their future success (Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2016 ; Wang et al., 2018 ). Typically, these negative biases are explained by the persistent negative stereotypes that inadvertently influence people’s judgments and expectations (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000 ; Macrae et al., 1994 ). If social categories and the corresponding stereotypes are activated in teachers, they may non-consciously adjust their judgment downwards based on negative stereotypes about students with a Turkish migration background, resulting in a negative bias.

2.3 Positive feedback bias towards ethnic minority students

In another strand of research, however, different results emerged, indicating not a negative but a positive bias towards ethnic minority students (e.g., Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Harber, 2004 ). The crucial difference in their designs lies in the addressee: In experiments finding a negative bias, participants revealed their impressions to a third party (the researchers; e.g., Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ), but experiments finding a positive bias asked participants to communicate their impressions to the target students, i.e., to give feedback (e.g., Harber, 2004 ).

In a series of experiments, Harber and colleagues compared feedback given to Black and Latinx students to feedback given to White students in the US (Harber, 1998 , 2004 ; Harber et al., 2010 , 2012 , 2019 ). In these experiments, university students received an essay supposedly written by a fellow student who was portrayed as either Black or White. When the author was supposedly Black, participants gave more positive comments on the content of the essay and rated it higher than when the author was White. However, there were no differences regarding comments on and ratings of essay mechanics (e.g., grammar). Harber and colleagues replicated his findings in experiments involving verbal feedback (Harber, 2004 ) and in samples of teacher students and teachers (Harber et al., 2010 , 2012 ). Research conducted in Canada found the same positive feedback bias when comparing feedback that university students gave to Indigenous versus White Canadian peers. Whereas Harber and colleagues investigated how positive the feedback was overall, Croft and Schmader ( 2012 ) examined whether feedback was more positive towards Indigenous Canadians because of an inflation of positive comments, a reduction of negative comments, or both. While both Indigenous and White Canadians received similar levels of praise, Indigenous Canadians received less criticism ( feedback withholding effect ). Thus, it seems that the positive feedback bias may be due to people holding back criticism rather than overemphasizing positive aspects.

Harber ( 1998 , 2004 ) explains these findings using a motivational lens: Because White people aim to be and/or appear to be egalitarian and free of prejudice (Bergsieker et al., 2010 ; Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986 ; Trawalter et al., 2009 ), they will avoid ambiguous situations in which their behavior may be construed as prejudiced or discriminatory. However, if the situation cannot be avoided, they may overcorrect negative reactions in an attempt to demonstrate that they are unprejudiced—resulting in more positive reactions to ethnic minority than White people. Indeed, there is evidence of overcorrection in interracial interactions in general (Bergsieker et al., 2010 ; Littleford et al., 2005 ; Mendes & Koslov, 2013 ). Importantly, giving feedback is also an ambiguous situation in which behavior may be interpreted as prejudiced, particularly criticism. This negative feedback could be either understood as warranted or as compromised by prejudice. To avoid the latter, people may artificially “buffer” their feedback, making it more lenient. However, this may not be necessary on less ambiguous feedback tasks for which there are clear and universal rules. This may explain why a positive feedback bias was consistently found regarding feedback about essay content but not essay mechanics (e.g., Harber et al., 2012 ). Thus, we expect German teacher students to give less negative feedback to ethnic minority students on those feedback dimensions involving personal discretion rather than on those involving clear-cut rules.

3 Personal factors influencing the positive feedback bias

Not all people may show the positive feedback bias to the same extent since their motivation to not be or not appear to be prejudiced may vary. Harber et al. ( 2010 ) argue that this motivation may originate either in the desire to see oneself as unprejudiced (self-concept) or to demonstrate to others that one is unprejudiced (self-presentation). Plant and Devine ( 1998 ) developed this distinction between internal motivation and external motivation to respond without prejudice. According to them, an internal motivation is based on the wish to be unprejudiced and to live in accordance with these values, whereas an external motivation reflects concerns of being socially excluded because of the perceived social pressure to be unprejudiced. Because internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice are theoretically and empirically independent (Plant & Devine, 1998 ), people may be both internally and externally motivated, motivated by only one source, or not at all. If the positive feedback bias primarily emerges due to self-presentation concerns, people who are motivated purely by external reasons may be especially likely to exhibit a positive feedback bias (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ). However, if self-concept concerns are at the heart of positive feedback bias, people with a high internal motivation may be more likely to give positively biased feedback (Crosby & Monin, 2007 ). Overall, people’s motivation to respond without prejudice has been linked to a positive bias, but the results have not been consistent across studies. Since the present research focuses on a different cultural context, it is worthwhile re-examining whether a moderating effect is present.

In addition to motivation explicitly linked to responding without prejudice, peoples’ general need to present themselves as unprejudiced might be associated with greater positive feedback bias. Importantly, people high in self-esteem may feel less pressure to engage in impression management techniques since they may already feel secure in the knowledge that they are likeable (Leary et al., 1995 ). However, people low in self-esteem may doubt that others view them positively, therefore being more motivated to demonstrate their goodwill and likeability—as well as their lack of prejudice in interracial/ethnic interactions. In addition to the total level of self-esteem, it may play a role how contingent a person’s self-esteem is on the approval by others, i.e., how much importance they place on the opinion that others have of them (Crocker et al., 2003 ). People high in contingent self-esteem may be more motivated to demonstrate that they are unprejudiced, as societal norms reflect that prejudice is disapproved of (Crandall et al., 2002 ). To our knowledge, the moderation of the positive feedback bias by participants’ trait self-esteem and contingency of self-esteem on others’ approval has not yet been tested.

4 Research gap and present study

Both judging students’ achievements and giving feedback to students are important elements of teachers’ work. Given the importance of useful and accurate feedback for students’ learning (Hattie, 2008 ; Hattie & Timperley, 2007 ), the fact that to date no studies exist that compared if and how impressions differ when teachers judge a student’s performance and give feedback to them is surprising. The first aim of our study is to fill in this research gap regarding feedback inflation by comparing teachers’ impressions in these two situations.

So far, research on possible negative ethnic biases in judgments and research on possible positive biases when giving feedback to ethnic minority students was unconnected and conducted in separate studies. Thus, the second aim of our study is to for the first time apply the same material and examine the same dependent variables in a study that compares situations of conveying an impression of target students’ essays with and without the prospect that it will be forwarded to these students.

Conducting this experiment in a large city in Germany, we are able to test whether a positive feedback bias is present in German teacher students for the first time. While several studies from the US and Canada report these positive biases towards members of negatively stereotyped minorities (e.g., Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Harber et al., 2012 ), it is not known if such positively biased feedback also occurs in Germany regarding students with a Turkish migration background. It is important to stress that the relationships between White and Black Americans as well as between descendants of colonialists and Indigenous peoples in Canada differ in important historical and social aspects from the relationship between Germans without a migration background and descendants of Turkish labor migrants. However, US-American teachers have shown the positive feedback bias towards Latinx Americans as well (Harber et al., 2012 ), which indicates that positive bias affects members of more recently migrated, negatively stereotyped groups as well. Moreover, the central tenets in Harber’s ( 1998 ) reasoning are present in the German context as well. Persistent negative stereotypes about Turks and Turkish-Germans are well-known (e.g., Bonefeld & Karst, 2020 ) and—if applied—they are at odds with the desire to be or appear unprejudiced. German teacher students grapple with different and fair approaches to cultural heterogeneity (Hachfeld et al., 2011 ) and research on the differentiation between explicit and implicit attitudes towards Germans with a Turkish migration background suggests that prejudice may exist implicitly, but is not considered socially acceptable (Glock et al., 2020 ).

Lastly, the moderating factors of a possible positive feedback bias towards students with a Turkish migration background will be studied. Earlier studies in Canada found that a greater external motivation to respond without prejudice was associated with a greater positive feedback bias when internal motivation was low at the same time (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ), which is yet to be examined in Germany. Furthermore, we add to the existing literature by examining whether those with lower self-esteem and those with greater contingency of their self-esteem on the approval of others may be more prone to exhibit a positive bias in feedback.

In detail, we will test the following hypotheses: We expected that teacher students’ feedback would be more positive than their judgments made to a third party, the research team (H1). Moreover, we expected that this effect would be stronger for students with than for students without a migration background due to a negative bias towards the former in the judgment condition and a positive bias in the feedback condition (H2a), with the exception of dimensions regarding writing mechanics and style (H2b). Lastly, we expected that in the feedback condition, the positive bias would be stronger in participants who had lower self-esteem, higher contingency of self-esteem on others’ approval and who were highly externally motivated to respond without prejudice but simultaneously not internally motivated to do so (H3a-c).

5.1 Participants

In total, 160 teacher students participated in the study (74.4% female, 78.8% without a migration background). On average, they were 24.7 years old ( SD  = 5.8; range  = 18–50 years). Participants were excluded from all analyses if their writing was substandard ( n  = 1), took less than 15 min to read each essay and write the judgments/feedback ( n  = 7), questioned the cover story ( n  = 4) or had significant trouble understanding the procedure ( n  = 1). Moreover, participants who could reasonably be expected to be subject to negative stereotypes based on their own migration background (e.g., Turkish)—and therefore might not be concerned about being prejudiced against this group—were excluded from the analyses, as well as those who did not fill in their migration background ( n  = 15). The final sample consisted of 132 participants.

5.2 Development and pilot testing of the materials

In total, three pilot studies were conducted to ensure the validity of the materials used in the study. In the first pilot study, seventeen 11 th grade students were asked to write essays on “digital media in schools.” Based on these materials, four low-quality and two high-quality essays on this topic were developed. Subsequently, 20 teacher students read each of these essays and rated style, mechanics (e.g., punctuation), and content. A high-quality buffer essay as well as the two low-quality essays which did not differ on any item apart from punctuation were selected for the study ( M  = 611.3 words, SD  = 71.1, range  = 534–674).

Moreover, we conducted a pilot study to select names to be attached to the essays. A separate sample of 48 teacher students indicated for 27 German- and Turkish-origin male names whether they were familiar with the name and whether they thought the name was German-origin, Turkish-origin or were uncertain. Five Turkish- and German-origin names each were chosen that participants were most familiar with (minimum: 91.6%) and for which most participants correctly indicated the origin (minimum: 88%). No Turkish-origin names were mistaken for German-origin names; participants may have been uncertain about their origin due to the similarity with Arabic-origin names.

A third pilot study with 254 teacher students was conducted to pre-test an adapted version of Sommer’s ( 2017 ) translation of Plant and Devine’s ( 1998 ) questionnaire on internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. With regards to external motivation to respond without prejudice, an exploratory factor analysis revealed double factor loadings for one item regarding “political correctness” and this item was therefore excluded from the scale for the main study.

5.3 Design and procedure

Our experiment had a 2 (evaluation condition: non-communicated judgment vs. feedback) by 2 (target students’ migration background: Turkish vs. none) design in which the former was varied between subjects and the latter varied within subjects. In the judgment condition, participants learned that the goal of the study was to find out how teacher students evaluate comprehensive essays and were explicitly informed that the student authors would not see their responses. Thus, participants expected to provide a judgment of the essays to a third party, the research team. In the feedback condition, participants heard that they would participate in an “Online-Feedback project” providing “easily accessible feedback” to students on their essays, and that they would send their feedback via e-mail. Thus, these participants expected to provide feedback to a real student, though their anonymity was still protected. All participants believed that the students were 11th grade students from the city in which the study took place.

Participants arrived at the laboratory at set time points and the evaluation condition was randomized for each timeslot (typically 2–3 participants). After the experimenter relayed the cover story, participants started working on a booklet containing (again) the cover story, the original writing prompt for the students, and three essays. A cover page indicating age, grade and name preceded each essay. The first essay was a buffer essay, supposedly written by a girl with a German name, and it was supposed to familiarize participants with the task and strengthen the cover story (not included in analyses). The next two essays were supposedly written by boys with a German- and Turkish-origin name, respectively. The order of the male students’ migration background, the content of the essays, and the handwriting were all counterbalanced.

After reading each essay, participants filled in either a “judgment form” or a “feedback form” on their impression of the essay, including both an open text and rating format to cover multiple dimensions of the impression. At the top of the page, participants were prompted to type the name of the student to ensure that they were aware of his supposed migration background. In the feedback condition, participants attached their filled-in feedback form to a pre-written e-mail and sent it to the supposed e-mail address of the student before moving on to the next essay. After reading all essays, they filled in a questionnaire containing the scales on self-esteem, contingency of self-esteem, internal/external motivation to respond without prejudice and demographic data.

5.4 Measures

5.4.1 impressions of the essay.

The first page of the judgment/feedback form consisted of an open answer format. Participants were requested to address strengths and weaknesses of the essay regarding content as well as style/mechanics. A team of four coders coded several dimensions in each text: a) total number of negative and positive comments, b) number of positive and negative comments regarding the content of the essay, e.g., “He does not elaborate on weaknesses and risks,” c) number of positive and negative comments regarding style/mechanics of the essay, e.g., “Your greatest problem is capitalization.” d) number of suggestions for improvement, e.g., “I recommend using more paragraphs,” and e) coders’ perception of the tone of the open format answer as a whole on a scale from 1 ( The tone of the text is very cold or tough. It seems distanced, chilly, or possibly hurtful ) to 7 ( The tone of the text is very warm or considerate. It seems friendly and full of understanding ). Codes were applied to meaningful units, e.g., subclauses. Each open format answer was coded by two coders blinded to migration background. Coders used a subsample of texts for coding practice, and their subsequent inter-rater reliability was .77–.94 for all variables (ICC(1, 4)). If coders differed more than two points on a coding dimension, these deviations were discussed, resulting in maximum differences of one point. For further data analysis, the average score across the two raters was used. On average, participants provided 14.56 comments per essay ( SD  = 4.3; range  = 5–28), and overall number of comments did not differ between the judgment and feedback conditions, t (130) =  − 0.40, p  = .691, or by the student’s migration background, t (131) = 0.43, p  = .665.

The second page of the document consisted of five one-item scales measuring a) the grade the participant would give the essay on a scale of 1–15, Footnote 1 b) their impression of the student’s writing skills, of the style/mechanics of the essay, and of the content of the essay on three scales from 1 ( very bad ) to 7 ( very good ), and c) the degree to which they agreed with the statement “Based on what I have read I believe that [you/the student] could successfully master the demands of studying at a university” on a scale from 1 ( I do not agree at all ) to 7 ( I agree strongly ).

5.4.2 Self-esteem and contingency of self-esteem

Self-esteem was measured using Ferring and Filipp’s ( 1996 ) translation of Rosenberg’s ( 1979 ) questionnaire. The scale consists of ten items answered on a Likert scale from 1 ( disagree strongly ) to 4 ( agree strongly ), e.g., “I fear there is not much I can be proud of.” The scale was reliable (Cronbach’s α = .86). The contingency of self-esteem on others’ approval was assessed using a 5-item scale by Schwinger et al. ( 2015 ), e.g., “I don’t mind if others have a negative opinion of me,” which are answered on a scale from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). Reliability was good (Cronbach’s α = .80). After reverse-coding the relevant items, higher values indicated greater self-esteem and greater contingency of self-esteem, respectively.

5.4.3 Internal/external motivation to respond without prejudice

Participants’ motivation to respond without prejudice was assessed using Plant and Devine’s ( 1998 ) questionnaire as translated into German by Sommer ( 2017 ), further adapting the items by substituting “people with a migration background” as the relevant target group. The final questionnaire consists of two independent subscales that measure internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice (five and four items, respectively), e.g., “It is important to me personally to act without prejudice” and “I try to give the impression of not being prejudiced so I am not rejected by others.” Participants answered the items on a scale from 1 ( I do not agree at all ) to 9 ( I agree entirely ). The subscales had adequate to good reliability, Cronbach’s α = .75 (internal) and .80 (external).

6.1 Analysis plan

To test whether the impressions of the essays differed based on the evaluation condition and did so differently for students with a Turkish and without a migration background, 2 (evaluation condition: non-communicated judgment vs. feedback) × 2 (target student migration background: none vs. Turkish) mixed ANOVAs were conducted. Subsequently, we tested whether the expected effects in the feedback condition were moderated by participants’ self-esteem, contingency of self-esteem and their motivation to respond without prejudice in regression analyses. For these moderator analyses in the feedback condition, the differences between the ratings of and comments about the essays of the student with a Turkish migration background and the student without a migration background were used as dependent variables. That is, these analyses predict the extent of a positive or negative bias. For each dependent variable, two regressions were conducted: the first including self-esteem and contingency of self-esteem on approval of others and the second including internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice as well as their interaction. All continuous predictors were centered at the mean.

Five participants (3.8%) had some missingness on the rating-scale dependent variables (three missed individual items and two missed the second page containing the rating scales). Due to these infrequent non-responses, the sample size varies slightly across analyses ( n  = 128–132).

6.2 Preliminary analyses

Because we randomized the order of the writer’s migration background, half of participants read an essay by a student with a German name first ( n  = 66) and the other half an essay by student with a Turkish name ( n  = 66). To test whether we needed to control for writer order, independent-sample t -tests were conducted predicting the difference scores (see 6.1) on all dependent variables. For those variables for which there was a significant difference (essay quality content, essay quality style/mechanics, total number of negative comments, negative comments on content, negative comments on style/mechanics), writer order was included as a control variable in the analyses (reference group: student with a Turkish migration background first). No significant differences on the dependent variables by participants’ gender or age emerged, and these demographic variables were therefore not included as control variables.

6.3 Impressions in judgment vs. feedback conditions (H1)

We hypothesized that feedback would be more positive than the judgments. Indeed, the main effect of evaluation condition was significant or marginally significant for a majority of dimensions, corroborating this hypothesis (see Table 1 for means and standard deviations). With regards to the scales, participants giving feedback tended to give higher grades in the feedback than the judgment condition ( F (1, 126) = 3.48, p  = .065, partial η 2  = .027). In the feedback condition, they rated students’ writing skills as higher than in the judgment condition ( F (1, 126) = 7.30, p  = .008, partial η 2  = .055). When giving feedback, participants also rated the essay quality, both in content and style/mechanics, as higher than when providing a judgment ( F (1, 124) content  = 10.58, p  = .001, partial η 2  = .079; F (1, 124) style/mechanics  = 11.62, p  = .001, partial η 2  = .086). Moreover, participants tended to agree more strongly that the student could be successful in higher education when giving feedback than when giving a judgment ( F (1, 126) = 3.20, p  = .076, partial η 2  = .025). In the open text format, participants also offered more suggestions for improvement in the feedback than the judgment condition ( F (1, 130) = 109.19, p  < .001, partial η 2  = .457) and wrote in a warmer and more considerate tone in their feedback than in their judgments ( F (1, 130) = 79.25, p  < .001, partial η 2  = .379). With regards to their comments, participants included more positive comments when giving feedback, both in the number of positive comments on content and total number of positive comments than when judging students’ essays ( F (1, 130) comments content  = 9.46, p  = .003, partial η 2  = .064, and F (1, 130) total comments  = 6.87, p  = .010, partial η 2  = .050, respectively). In tendency, participants also made less negative comments regarding content of the essay in the feedback condition than in the judgment condition ( F (1, 128) = 3.18, p  = .077, partial η 2  = .024). As a result, the percentage of positive comments was higher in the feedback condition than in the judgment condition as well ( F (1, 130) = 9.73, p  = .002, partial η 2  = .070). Unexpectedly, the number of positive and negative comments on style/mechanics as well as negative points in total did not differ by evaluation condition (see Table 1 for all results).

6.4 Impressions of essays by students with a Turkish migration background vs. none (H2a-b)

We expected that the effect of evaluation condition would be stronger for students with a supposed Turkish migration background than for students without a migration background (H2a), with the exception of those dimensions related to essay style/mechanics (H2b). Contrary to our expectations, the interaction term was not significant for all but one rating dimension, grade ( F (1, 126) = 2.91, p  = .091, partial η 2  = .023). However, this marginally significant effect was not in the expected direction. In tendency, a positive bias on grades towards students with a Turkish migration background was only present in the judgment condition, not in the feedback condition. Based on these results, hypothesis 2a was not supported. We did find support for hypothesis 2b since there was no significant effect on the scale-based ratings of essay style/mechanics and the positive and negative comments regarding style/mechanics in the open text (see Table 1 ).

However, a number of main effects of student migration background emerged, signaling that participants provided more positive impressions related to overall assessment, e.g., grade and writing skills, and content-oriented comments to students with a migration background in both experimental conditions. Therefore, the absence of significant interaction effects was due the lack of a negative bias in the judgment condition. In both conditions, participants gave better grades to the student with a Turkish migration background than the student without a migration background ( F (1, 126) = 3.94, p  = .049, partial η 2  = .030), and tended to rate the writing skills of the student with a Turkish migration background as better than of the student without a migration background ( F (1, 126) = 3.29, p  = .072, partial η 2  = .025). Moreover, they included more positive comments about the essay by the student with the Turkish migration background than the essay by the student without a migration background ( F (1, 130) = 7.98, p  = .005, partial η 2  = .058) and had a higher percentage of positive comments in the open text about the essay by the student with a Turkish migration background than in the text about the essay by the student without a migration background ( F (1, 130) = 6.93, p  = .009, partial η 2  = .051). In their impressions of the content of the essay, participants also exhibited a positive bias in favor of the student with a Turkish name: They rated the quality of essay content as higher for the student with a Turkish migration background than for the student without a migration background ( F (1, 124) = 6.25, p  = .014, partial η 2  = .048). Additionally, they gave more positive comments regarding essay content of the essay by the student with a Turkish migration than the essay by the student without a migration background ( F (1, 130) = 7.83, p  = .006, partial η 2  = .057). Lastly, participants also tended to give less negative comments regarding content on the essay by the student with a Turkish migration background than by the student without a migration background ( F (1, 128) = 3.53, p  = .063, partial η 2  = .027). Again, no differences were found for impressions on style/mechanics (see Table 1 ).

Overall, the results of the mixed ANOVAs indicated that feedback was more positive than judgments for all students and that students with a Turkish migration backgrounds received higher ratings regardless of evaluation condition, with the exception of the comments and ratings regarding style and mechanics of the essays.

6.5 Moderation effects in the feedback condition by self-esteem, contingency of self-esteem, and motivation to respond without prejudice (H3a-c)

We expected that the size of the positive bias in the feedback condition would vary with participants’ characteristics and motivations. We hypothesized that lower self-esteem (H3a) and greater contingency of self-esteem (H3b) would be related to greater positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background. Moreover, we expected that those low in internal and simultaneously high in external motivation to respond without prejudice would show a stronger positive bias (H3c). The regressions used to test these hypotheses predicted difference scores, with the values of the student without a migration background being subtracted from the values of the student with a Turkish migration background, and thus test whether the extent of a positive or negative bias was influenced by the moderators. As expected, lower self-esteem was associated with greater positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background (see Table 2 for all results). However, this effect was limited to dimensions indicating the general positivity of the comments in the open text, i.e., participants with a lower self-esteem differentiated more between the student with a Turkish migration background and the student without one regarding positive comments overall ( b  =− 1.76, SE  = 0.87, p  = .048) and positive comments related to essay content ( b  = − 2.23, SE  = 0.76, p  = .005). As a result, those with lower self-esteem also had a greater difference in the percentage of positive comments given to a student with a Turkish migration background and a student without a migration background ( b  = − 0.13, SE  = 0.05, p  = .012). Thus, hypothesis 3a was partially supported. Contrary to expectations, greater contingency of self-esteem on others’ approval was not related to greater positivity of the feedback given to students with a Turkish-origin name (H3b). However, one unexpected marginally significant effect emerged: Greater contingency of self-esteem was associated with a lower percentage of positive comments for students with a Turkish compared to no migration background ( b  = − 0.07, SE  = 0.03, p  = .053), i.e., a more negative feedback given to them as compared to their peer without a migration background.

Regarding the effects for participants’ motivation to respond without prejudice, results were mixed and provided only partial support for hypothesis 3c. Contrary to our hypothesis, those participants who were low in internal motivation and simultaneously high in external motivation did not consistently show a stronger positive bias. In tendency, when external motivation to respond without prejudice was low, internal motivation tended to have only small or no effects on participants’ positive bias regarding grade ( b interaction  = − 0.28, SE  = 0.16, p  = .088), essay style/mechanics ( b interaction  = − 0.18, SE  = 0.11, p  = .088), total number of positive comments ( b interaction  = − 0.53, SE  = 0.28, p  = .063), and number of positive comments on content ( b interaction  = − 0.44, SE  = 0.25, p  = .087). Contrarily, when external motivation was high, greater internal motivation was associated with less positive bias. Thus, participants tended to show the greatest positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background on these dimensions when they were purely motivated to do so by external reasons, i.e., when they were low in internal and simultaneously high in external motivation. There also emerged different main effects in these analyses, which are reported in the supplementary material (Online Resource 1).

7 Discussion

In the present research, we examined two phenomena regarding the feedback process: First, we examined whether feedback would generally be more positive than a judgment that was not communicated to the student (feedback inflation). Secondly, we tested whether the difference between feedback and non-communicated judgments would be greater for negatively stereotyped ethnic minority students, specifically students with a Turkish migration background in Germany (positive feedback bias). To our knowledge, our study is the first to directly compare feedback and judgment conditions in a sample of aspiring teachers, making it an important addition to educational research. Moreover, we aimed to both replicate negative ethnic biases in non-communicated judgments and test whether the positive feedback bias would emerge in the German context for the first time. Lastly, we examined whether personal characteristics—in part not examined in prior literature—might be associated with the extent of a positive feedback bias.

We found that teacher students were decidedly more positive when they gave feedback to the students than when they handed in non-communicated judgments to the research team. Unexpectedly, teacher students did not exhibit a negative ethnic bias in their judgments but rather a positive bias in favor of students with a Turkish migration background both in judgments and feedback. This was the case on both rating scales similar to scales used in previous research (e.g., Sprietsma, 2013 ) as well as open-text feedback, which had not been examined in research on negative ethnic biases up to now. On some dimensions of feedback, this positive bias was somewhat greater for those with low self-esteem and, in tendency, those low in internal motivation to respond without prejudice, but mainly when they were highly externally motivated.

7.1 Feedback vs. non-communicated judgments

When teacher students provided feedback, they conveyed a more positive impression of the students’ work than when they handed in their judgments to the research team. Feedback contained more positive ratings on the scales reflecting overall assessments and open comments included more positive comments and suggestions for further improvement. Overall, the tone was warmer and more considerate. These findings suggest that teacher students adapt their initial judgments to make feedback more palatable. Our results indicate that teacher students employ a strategy of increasing positive comments in concert with a somewhat attenuated strategy to reduce criticism. This corresponds to prior studies’ finding that people include positive aspects in feedback (e.g., Ginsburg et al., 2016 ), and are reluctant to communicate negative information (Bergsieker et al., 2012 ; Qadan et al., 2013 ).

7.2 Positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background

Teacher students included more positive comments and, in tendency, less negative comments on essays of students with a Turkish migration background than students without a migration background. Moreover, they rated their essays as having better content and deserving a better grade and also tended to communicate higher opinions of the writing skills of students with a Turkish migration background. Unexpectedly, this was the case both with regards to judgments and feedback. Unlike research conducted in Canada (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ), participants’ feedback was more positive overall mainly due to an increase in positive feedback and only somewhat due to a decrease the amount of negative feedback they provided to the student. Overall, the results do support the reasoning that a positive bias arises from concerns to be or appear to be prejudiced, though the presence of a positive bias in the judgment group challenge this interpretation.

In the feedback condition, the results found by Harber and colleagues (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ; Harber, 1998 , 2004 ; Harber et al., 2010 , 2012 , 2019 ) were replicated with regards to German teacher students without a migration background addressing students with a Turkish migration background. While teacher students gave more positive feedback on overall assessments (e.g., grade) and in their comments to students with a Turkish migration background, they did not give different feedback to students with and without a migration background regarding the style and mechanics of the essay. The chief difference between overall assessments as well as impressions of essay content and essay style/mechanics is the degree to which there are objective criteria available to judge their quality. Negative feedback regarding content and overall assessments is more ambiguous and could be more easily interpreted as biased. As a result, the typical pattern in studies on the positive feedback bias emerges: a positive bias on overall assessment and content-related dimensions in favor of students belonging to a negatively stereotyped group and no bias on mechanics-related dimensions.

The positive bias in the judgment condition, however, calls into question the argument that people may give more positive feedback to negatively stereotyped people out of a concern to be or appear to be prejudiced, since this effect should be present only when interacting with another person. Moreover, this result is at odds with a host of studies conducted in Germany regarding negative biases in judgments on scales that are highly similar to the ones used in this research (e.g., Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ; Sprietsma, 2013 ), but also judging other constructs (e.g., Glock et al., 2013 ). In recent years, researchers in Germany have worked on better understanding the contexts under which such negative biases occur. Some studies find negative biases only in counter-stereotypic scenarios, i.e., when an ethnic minority student is portrayed as performing well (Wenz & Hoenig, 2020 ). Other studies suggest the opposite: Stereotypes are most likely to be applied in stereotype-confirming scenarios (Glock, 2016 ; Glock & Krolak-Schwerdt, 2013 ). The sole study that also found a positive bias in judgments towards a student with a Turkish migration background found this positive bias when the student was performing well, but when the student was performing poorly, as the student did in the present study, a negative bias emerged (Kleen & Glock, 2018 ). Overall, prior research suggests that the conditions under which negative biases emerge are varied and complex (Glock, 2016 ; Glock & Krolak-Schwerdt, 2013 ; Glock et al., 2013 ; Holder & Kessels, 2017 ; Wenz & Hoenig, 2020 ).

The most parsimonious explanation for the discrepancy between our results and prior studies may be that the participants in the judgment condition may also have adjusted their responses. For example, they may already be aware of the discourse on possible prejudice and discrimination against students with a Turkish migration background in school, or specifically writing the name of the student on the judgment form made the students migration background more salient. Thus, even participants in the judgment condition may have been motivated to demonstrate to themselves and/or the research team that they were unprejudiced and subsequently overcorrected. Another potential explanation could be that some earlier research not finding evidence of a negative ethnic bias may be less likely to be published, resulting in a publication bias.

Alternatively, the shifting standards theory (Biernat & Manis, 1994 ; Biernat et al., 1991 ) could explain why a positive bias was present across evaluation conditions. This theory posits that peoples’ characteristics or performance are judged relative to the expectations for a group to which they belong, which can be informed by stereotypes. The way in which judgments are assessed influences whether this group-specific shift in judgment can be expressed. If subjective scales are used, with endpoints such as “very bad” to “very good,” the same endpoint can acquire different meaning for different groups—in accordance with what performance is considered “very bad” and “very good” for a member of that group (“That’s very good for a student with a migration background!”). Holder and Kessels ( 2017 ) demonstrated such shifting standards in German teacher students judging students with a Turkish migration background. Since we used subjective rating scales, students with a Turkish migration background may have received more positive ratings simply because their performance is better relative to the negative stereotypes about their group (Biernat & Manis, 1994 ). This process would be unaffected by interactions, thus explaining why the evaluation conditions did not differ. However, all of our scales apart from the grade were subjective scales, including those related to essay mechanics. The lack of a positive bias on subjective scales related to essay mechanics speaks partly against this interpretation of our findings. Thus, our results are partially consistent with both the shifting standards and the positive feedback bias perspectives.

7.3 Moderating effect: Do self-concept or self-presentation concerns fuel the positive feedback bias?

Our last aim in this research was to establish whether self-esteem, contingency of self-esteem on others’ approval, and motivation to respond without prejudice were associated with the degree of positive feedback bias. This also gave us a first impression as to whether concerns about being prejudiced or appearing to be prejudiced are more central to the positive feedback bias, and we discuss our findings with regard to these competing explanations. The former perspective rests on the explanation that people are motivated to maintain a positive view of themselves (self-concept), whereas the latter posits a motivation to maintain a good reputation in the eyes of others (self-presentation; Harber et al., 2010 ; Plant & Devine, 1998 ). Our results, which established a main effect of self-esteem on three feedback dimensions, could support either a self-concept or self-presentational perspective. This main effect of self-esteem may reflect that more insecure people may use increased positivity to either convince themselves or others that they are unprejudiced, while people who are assured of themselves are both less likely to be concerned about being prejudiced and about self-presentation.

Tentative support for the self-presentational perspective can be seen in the results regarding internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. These results were similar to research by Croft and Schmader ( 2012 ), showing that those purely motivated by self-presentation tended to exhibit the strongest positive feedback bias. Based on the self-presentational perspective, however, we would have expected those whose self-esteem was more contingent on others’ approval to be more likely to show positive bias as well. However, this is not what we found—the absence of an effect here speaks more to the relevance of one’s self-concept than of one’s reputation. Based on our results, people who are especially motivated to be approved of as unprejudiced exhibit a greater positive bias, but those seeking approval more generally do not. Overall, our results regarding moderation effects in the German context do not paint a clear picture as to whether positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background is a result of self-concept or self-presentation concerns. Future experimental manipulations may be able to better differentiate between these possible motivations.

7.4 Implications for the school context

Adapting feedback to take interpersonal and motivational aspects into account is not necessarily a detriment—it may well protect the relationship between a teacher and their student and balance out feedback that might otherwise be devastating (Kerssen-Griep et al., 2003 , 2008 ). However, overly positive feedback may have negative effects on students’ learning and motivation both when students accept it at face value and when they question it. When students believe that they have already understood the material well enough, they may develop unrealistic assessments of their understanding and may be less motivated to extend more effort. These unrealistic self-assessments could also relate to the attainment-aspiration gap among ethnic minority students in Germany, i.e., the finding that they have higher educational expectations than may be warranted by their academic performance (Becker & Gresch, 2016 ; McElvany et al., 2018 ). Overly positive feedback may, over time, encourage an overly optimistic self-concept and greater self-efficacy in these students—which, in turn, relate to higher aspirations (McElvany et al., 2018 ). While positive self-concepts in themselves have been linked to better performance (Eckert et al., 2006 ), the role of an overly optimistic self-concept is more ambiguous as it has been linked to both negative and positive consequences for motivation and performance (Butler, 2011 ; Kim et al., 2010 ; Praetorius et al., 2016 ).

Other students may question the accuracy and reliability of overly positive feedback, which undermines the credibility of the teacher and their feedback (McCroskey & Teven, 1999 ). Credibility is a precursor to the acceptance of feedback and students may reject feedback that lacks credibility as a basis for future learning (Finn et al., 2009 ; van de Ridder et al., 2015 ). Ethnic minority students may be particularly at risk for these negative effects of overly positive feedback since they are especially likely to question the credibility of teachers’ feedback, both positive and negative (Biernat & Danaher, 2012 ; Crocker et al., 1991 ; Hoyt et al., 2007 ; Major et al., 2016 ). Receiving and discounting positive feedback is also detrimental to US-American ethnic minority students’ self-esteem and their subjective and physiological stress response, especially for those sensitive to race-based rejection (Crocker et al., 1991 ; Major et al., 2016 ; Mendes et al., 2008 ; Mendoza-Denton et al., 2010 ). Whether similar effects may occur in the German context should be examined in future research focusing on students’ perception of feedback.

Overall, while adapting one’s feedback to protect a student’s self-efficacy and motivation may be necessary and beneficial, teachers need to be mindful in how they deliver feedback so that it remains authentic and clearly conveys which aspects need improving. In the US, researchers have identified concrete solutions that may help deliver adequate feedback: Teachers are advised to avoid giving overly positive feedback to students, especially ethnic minority students, and to incorporate other messages to reduce the ambiguity that comes with criticizing them instead ( wise feedback ; Cohen & Steele, 2002 ; Yeager et al., 2013 ). This approach could also reduce the teacher’s personal concern that they might be perceived as prejudiced if they criticize negatively stereotyped students, reducing the urge to provide overly positive feedback in the first place.

7.5 Limitations and future research

Some limitations in the design of the present research should be taken into account when considering the results. First and foremost, we used a design in which teacher students gave feedback in written form. While this is a medium through which students receive feedback, there are many less formal ways in which teachers provide feedback, e.g., through comments in class or short face-to-face discussions. In personal conversation, feedback may actually be more positively inflated (Waung & Highhouse, 1997 ), and interpersonal concerns—including the concern to be or appear prejudiced—may come to the forefront more strongly. Future research should establish whether the positive bias towards students with a Turkish migration background is comparable in face-to-face interactions, as has been found in the US (Harber, 2004 ), or even greater. Similarly, all experimental research must consider the question of ecological validity. While experiments allow us to isolate potential causes of positive bias, teachers in classrooms have much more information about students than their name and essay. Moreover, they repeatedly interact with students—and give feedback at various times and in various forms. Because teachers must maintain a relationship with students—unlike subjects in our study—interpersonal concerns may be even more relevant to their feedback. However, as teachers are more familiar with their students and already have an established relationship, they may be less influenced by concerns that they may be or appear to be prejudiced. Thus, interactions between teachers and students familiar with one another need to be studied alongside effects in controlled environments. In addition to observational research with teachers, experiments with experienced teachers rather than teacher students may improve our understanding whether concerns about being or appearing to be prejudiced plague only inexperienced teachers.

Secondly, we varied the migration background of the target student within subjects, which has both advantages and disadvantages (Charness et al., 2012 ). Using a within-subjects design on this factor allowed us to account for individual differences regarding the effect of migration background, increasing power. Moreover, in this case a within-subjects design is more closely approximating the real-life situation of giving feedback, in which teachers do not consider students’ work in isolation, but one after the other. However, only one other study regarding the positive feedback bias used a within-subjects design (Croft & Schmader, 2012 ), while the other studies varied target student race/ethnicity between subjects. Therefore, our results are not directly comparable to these studies. Additionally, the within-subjects design might have introduced a consistency motive, such that participants aimed to judge/give feedback based on similar criteria and in a similar way. If this was the case, however, the differences by migration background might be considered a conservative test, as this would have worked to reduce any differences in judgments or feedback.

Thirdly, research on the positive feedback bias towards ethnic minority students has focused on stereotype-confirming situations, that is, feedback regarding low-quality essays. This was necessary to create a situation that would unambiguously require participants to critique the author to some extent. However, research on negative biases in judgments has found that whether a situation confirms or refutes stereotypes is impactful (Glock, 2016 ; Glock et al., 2013 ; Wenz & Hoenig, 2020 ). Future research may determine whether mediocre or good work is also subject to a positive feedback bias. Moreover, we kept the essay topic constant across the essays—future research could also examine possible topic effects by testing whether other, more controversial topics may lead to different results (e.g., race-related topics may lead to greater concern to be or appear to be prejudiced). Additionally, it might be of interest to test systematically whether the order of writer’s ethnicity (e.g., student with a German or a Turkish name first) may affect feedback and evaluations (e.g., Dutton, 1976 ).

Lastly, our approach was not able to detect ways in which intersections with other identities might exacerbate or attenuate negative and positive biases towards ethnic minority students. The authors of both essays were supposedly boys, and no additional information about membership in other stereotype-relevant groups was provided (e.g., social class). Research on both feedback and judgments has established differential effects by gender (Bonefeld et al., 2020 ; Jampol & Zayas, 2020 ; Kleen & Glock, 2018 ). Thus, how information about different intersecting group memberships is integrated and influences biases is an important avenue for future research.

7.6 Conclusion

When it comes to feedback, motivational and interpersonal concerns influence how positive and negative aspects are conveyed (e.g., Lupoli et al., 2017 ). The tension between giving caring as well as accurate feedback reflects the multiple goals involved in giving feedback and demonstrates that feedback is more than simply a transmission of information. Simultaneously, research established that ethnic minority students—relative to their ethnic majority peers—are judged more negatively (e.g., Bonefeld & Dickhäuser, 2018 ), but given more positive feedback (e.g. Harber, 2004 ). Our research adds to this knowledge by directly comparing judgments of and feedback to German students without a migration background and with a Turkish one. We demonstrated that teacher students inflate feedback for all students by including more positive content and, in tendency, less negative content. Moreover, teacher students showed a consistent positive bias in favor of students with a Turkish migration background in giving them more positive judgments and feedback.

Overly positive feedback could be considered a mixed blessing: While it may have motivating effects and support a more positive self-concept, a more realistic assessment of one’s understanding could be beneficial. Moreover, if the intentions behind positive feedback are questioned, it may easily be discounted and the teacher-student relationship damaged. Thus, it is imperative that teachers and teacher students understand the powerful motivational consequences their feedback has and learn to balance motivational concerns with accuracy. When interacting with negatively stereotyped students, teachers may need to be particularly mindful not to let personal concerns become more influential than their concern for the students’ well-being and learning.

Data and material availability

Data, material and code are available upon request.

This is the standard German grading system in the last two years of secondary school. Higher values indicate better grades.

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Nishen, A.K., Kessels, U. Non-communicated judgements of, versus feedback on, students’ essays: Is feedback inflation larger for students with a migration background?. Soc Psychol Educ 25 , 1–31 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09674-3

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Whenever philosophers and thinkers of all ages discuss thinking , they always assume an object-subject relationship as being the intrinsic and necessary feature of thought or mind . There is on the one side the subject who thinks and on the other side the object of thinking, that which is thought of or about. I think that this subject-object schematism is arbitrarily or subconsciously projected upon the thinking process. By analyzing thought it is presumed that there must be an object of thought, otherwise thought would be empty and meaningless [1] .

When I think of a table, what happens? Is there I, the subject and is there the table, which is the matter of my thought? That seems to be the most obvious explanation. Why? Because our experience of the world follows the same pattern of subject-object schematism. We experience the world as something ob-jected over against our being or the subject that we are. The hardness of the wood of the table we experience is something that does not belong to ourselves. It is thought of as a property of the table, independent of our status as human beings. We have an innate discriminatory faculty that tells us that there is a world outside of us, including other human beings, that is separated from ourselves. Although modern physics is not very supportive of this fact, we obstinately cling to this schismatic view of subject and object. There is no hardness in a table, hardness is not a basic and necessary property of the "table-ness", but is something we experience in our consciousness . It's our subjective interpretation of the sensations and perceptions of the world.

However, this subject-object pattern is of utmost usefulness for our daily life and the survival of the species homo sapiens. When it comes to the philosophical study of mind, we have to repudiate this primitive utilitaristic notion of everyday experience. Empiricism is a dead-end, a mental cul-de-sac. The ways of nature are not the ways of the mind, unless we identify both by mistake. I have, however, in various essays, pointed out quite clearly, that identification of mind and nature is not only absurd and illogical but defies our very mental experience. I introduce here a conceptual distinction between empiric and noetic experience . The former is experience of our sensations and perceptions and even emotions connected to sensations or perceptions, whereas the latter is the experience of our own consciousness and mind, or what is commonly called self-consciousness .

The act of projecting the subject-object schema on thinking determines the way we think. This means, our thinking is conceptual thinking , since only by creating an object in our mind do we create a concept. The concept is the direct outcome of subject-object schematism. Here again, we are referred to its usefulness. Conceptualization was the beginning of language. I do not deny the importance of conceptual thought at all, but I just do not accept that this kind of thought is the ultimate or only faculty of the mind. The way most of today's people think is not even indicative of the true nature of our mind. We are still in a primitive phase of noetic evolution . We are not yet fully developed human beings, especially not concerning our minds. By using conceptual thought we will never understand the true nature of mind. We have to transcend conceptual thought and thereby the subject-object schematism and attain a higher level of synthetic unity of both. Since mind is primarily unity, the subject-object dualism does not vindicate the truth of mind at all.

Paranoesis ( Transrational Thinking ), however, transcends this subject-object schematism. Subject and object are identical in Paranoetic Thinking. The subject is the object, and the object is the subject. I have to insert a caveat though: by identification of subject and object I do not refer to mystical experience , which claims the same. Mystical experience, as the expression denotes, is experience of a fundamental unity of the object and the subject, whereas Paranoesis is not an empiric experience of the unity, but a noetic "experience". It is not accompanied by an emotive Erlebnis (experience) of the unity, which transports the individual beyond actual space-time experience into a completely different world. The noetic "experience" of this unity stays within the mental realm of our mind. It is a higher experience of unity, because it understands the unity, whereas the mystic does not understand it. It surpasses her thinking, because she thinks conceptually. That's why the descriptions about this experience overflow with metaphors, analogies, and symbolic language. The mystic has not yet changed the way of her thinking to adapt her thought to her mystical experience. Furthermore, Paranoesis is not a stochastic occurrence as mystical experiences are. Once Paranoesis has been developed, it can be used anytime, anywhere. So, to return to this paranoetic unity of subject and object: I do not think of or about a table, but I think AS the table. This sounds pretty strange and absurd, because we are so thoroughly indoctrinated with this subject-object schematism that all talk of unity of subject and object seems to be abnormal or insane.

Mind as we know it, is mind adapted to nature, mind affected by and in the grip of nature's penetrating sovereignty. So long as we are subjected to this subservient obedience to nature, we completely misinterpret mind as it is per se. By overcoming the bondage and attachment to nature regarding our mind (NOT our body), we will be able to grasp the truth of mind. I do not claim here that we should absolve from our subject-object thinking entirely. That would mean a relapse into primitive thought patterns and may even be impossible. The evolution of thought throughout humanity is a necessary evolution and led to our modern world. We may doubt the scope of the beneficial effects of technocratic and rational thinking and even point out the current degeneration of culture and morality as issuing from post-modern rationalism, but all these developments have been necessary to constitute the philosophical basis for the further extension of our mind. By recognizing the limitations of rationalism, we may be enabled to usher in a new age, the age of Mind and embark on an exciting mental adventure, with an unlimited growth of our mental potentials, including the ultimate faculty of Paranoesis (Transrational Thinking). In a nutshell, all the preceding and current forms of thought are a substantive and indispensable process of mind's actualization of its true potentiality and essence. The unfolding of the truth of the mind is a gradual evolution, and we are still in the beginning. Current conceptual thinking is therefore most useful for living and survival and for science and technology as well, but it should not refrain us from developing the higher faculty of Paranoesis, latent in every human being as a supplementary way of thinking, providing us with the deepest insights into nature, Mind and the universe.

Paranoesis entails a new kind of knowledge . The knowledge we acquire in our ordinary life is referential knowledge and also ostensive knowledge . This knowledge is descriptive of features and facts that are observable and accessible to our empiric experience. It is always knowledge from "outside" of an object, about an object or process. This external knowledge is therefore never complete, but only admits of fragmentary knowledge . We never know all properties and factors of objects and processes but only a selective subset of particular ones. Attentive and selective processes of our consciousness monitor the amount and reliability of information reaching our sensory organs. Since our knowledge remains fragmentary and indirect (only via the sensory apparatus), we miss the big picture and fail to grasp the whole. Although we try to join our fragmentary views by inferential and logical instruments of reasoning, we still remain short of a holistic perspective. Since the relation and categorization of fragmentary views are something we arrived at not by mere experience, but only by deductive reasoning, we may err even in scientific or common-sense "truths". The method of modern science is the reverse of the method in the incipience of scientific thought . The method has changed from inductive to deductive reasoning, from empiricism to theoreticism. Today, first hypotheses and theories are developed before they are verified by experiments. The source for modern theories is not nature, but mind.

Fragmentary views also affect our actions and moral/ethical behavior. We act according to the knowledge we have of certain situations. If we lack certain facts we are said to be ignorant. For Socrates, ignorance was the greatest sin. He thought that knowledge of the good is sufficient to make a human being a morally good being. Socrates realized the importance of complete knowledge . But complete knowledge is not possible as long as we acquire our knowledge from the outside of the objects and processes. Transrational knowledge or Paranoetic Knowledge, on the other hand, is direct knowledge of the object-process, from "inside" the object, from its very nature. By thinking the object, we know the object as object, as it is, from its inner perspective. We have whole, paranoetic knowledge of an object or process. This almost seems to imply a blasphemic attitude, but it is just the logical conclusion of Paranoetic Thinking, of the unity of subject and object within our mind.

When we describe an object, e.g. a table, we can enumerate its visible properties, such as color, shape, material etc. From the material we can infer secondary properties as hardness, smell, color. Physics gives us another picture: the table is a quantum-physical field of vibrating particles. What is the reality? What we experience with our senses or the mathematical descriptions given by physics and sustained by experimental evidence? Neither! The truth of the table is not its appearance, its external properties, but its being (cf. Heidegger's fundamental ontology). The true nature of the table is identical with mind's being-for-itself. The being-in-itself of the object and the being-for-itself of mind are identical in Paranoesis. The true being of the object is only grasped by Paranoesis and not by referential knowledge. Conceptual and rational thinking use linguistic symbols as the representation of physical objects and processes. Symbols are the only available "facts" we have about reality. We are barred from direct experience of the object's truth, as long as we keep attached to our inured rational thinking, which is dependent on our language (cf. Benjamin Whorf). Paranoetic Thinking transcends not only conceptual thinking, but also language. This is true freedom of mind and here we have direct knowledge of reality, although this knowledge is not expressible by way of linguistic symbols or rational concepts as we know them. I discussed the problem of translationism elsewhere.

To explain these two different kinds of knowledge, I propose the following analogy. Keep in mind, though, that this is only a very rough and inaccurate analogy that only should help illuminate the ramifications and implications of Paranoetic Knowledge and Paranoetic Thinking.

We can judge the personality or character of someone in two ways:

1. By means of rational thought, that is, by describing her behavior, gestures, gait etc. and conclude from that to her character. Also from the way she speaks and what her views and ideas are, we may get some hints regarding her personality. As everyone can confirm from personal experience, this descriptive way of viewing and judging a person is not only prejudiced and biased in its approach, but often considerably off the mark. We have only fragmentary knowledge and the knowledge derived from clues of behavior is not conclusive or reliable at all, because we do not know the inner motives and reasons for a certain externally observable comportment. Also, the person we study, could deceive us deliberately.

2. Another way of knowing about the character of a person is, what is usually called Intuition or hunch or "feeling in the stomach". We know emotionally. Our feelings seem somehow to get in touch with the feelings of the other person. By means of sympathy or empathy we may acquire a more reliable and a more accurate knowledge of the elusive inner character of a person. Some people also are astute in recognizing typical forms of human behavior. They can interpret very subtle signs, such as looks, the emphasis or use of words, etc. From these almost imperceptible hints, they intuitively conclude to the true feeling behind these expressions. Everybody of us may have experienced both kinds of knowing and judging someone or something. Descriptive knowledge is predominant in our rational culture, where knowledge by "feeling" ( emotive or empathic knowledge ) is atrophied or maimed during our childhood.

My point with this analogy is that intuition is part of being a human being. Mind is the most important part of the human being and pure Mind is only obtainable to pure thinking , that is, Paranoesis . Again I have to remind of the important distinction between the term " intuition " as used by most of us in its degenerated meaning with an emotive connotation, and the term " Transrational Thinking ", where "Transrational" has nothing to do with feeling or emotion . Transrationality, as I understand it, is direct knowledge of truth. It is not an empiric experience, which is limited to the physical performance of our senses and the conceptualization of our perceptive mind.

How can we develop the faculty of Paranoesis, latent in everybody of us? First of all we need to know what Paranoesis is all about. Once more, I emphasize that Paranoesis ought not to be confused with intuition as understood in the way it is usually used, meaning the same as "feeling" in the sense of hunch, anticipation. This faculty has instinctual roots in nature. Another connotation of intuition is its identification with a telepathic or precognitive, though primitive knowledge of what is going to happen. In any case, it is always related to some kind of emotion. Paranoesis is NOT emotional! It transcends feeling, because feeling is always attached to a body, whereas mind transcends corporeality (although mind depends for its actuality on the body, but not for its beingness). Even so-called psychic or inner feelings cannot be experienced or thought of without some interaction with the body. Thinking as such does not feel. Since Paranoesis is pure thinking, it is above and beyond any sort of feeling.

Therefore, the first step in developing Paranoesis is to transcend our attachment to and dependence on feelings. That does not mean to reject feelings in an ascetic or Stoicist manner, but to transcend them, to leave the capricious and transitory territory of emotionalism and to extend one's mind to a reality beyond that represents the true essence of humankind. The reality of emotions is not denied or abrogated, but only refined, edified and elevated. This purgative act of noetic catharsis is a preliminary exigency for realizing our inmost essence, what it means to be a spiritual human being. By relegating emotion to its level of usefulness and to its sphere of corporeality, we get to understand feeling from a higher point of view and by grasping it, transcend it at the same time. The demotion of feeling may be apprehended as a pejorative act that seems to violate the holistic notion of the human being as a compound of body, soul and mind. This is not my intention, at all. I concede that emotion has its undeniable value and function for the human being and society, but, contrary to the notion of predominance of socio-psychological values in our society, I postulate a dual paradigm shift away from emotive values to noetic values and away from rational or conceptual values to transrational values.

The second step, then, is to transcend the level of conceptual thinking . Concepts are dependent on perceptions, experience and on our habit of producing objects of thought. It means transcending the subject-object schematism . For this purpose, we use concepts. By means of conceptual thinking we can understand the inner workings of conceptual thinking itself. By this reflective mode of thought we have already advanced to the next higher level, since we observe and analyze our usual way of thinking. It is a meta-level and we apply a meta-language to describe the functions of conceptual thought. Still, however, we are entrapped in the subject-object dualism that we intend to transcend eventually.

Understanding the way our everyday thinking works blazes the trail for the second step with the transcendence of subject-object schematism. This step consists in thinking holistically. Holistic thinking refers to the endeavor of overcoming the natural limits of our referential knowledge by deliberately extending its scope of applicability. This can be accomplished easily by just overstepping the punctiliously demarcated boundary lines of referential knowledge by adopting the versatility and liberality of speculative thought . It also means having the stamina to venture into uncharted waters beyond present boundaries. By abandoning the safe ground of referential knowledge, cherished highly by science and common-sense as well, we grow more open-minded and we are able to free our mind of the hereditary burden of rational thinking. In extending our mind there may be at first a lot of devious and spurious influences, quasi-knowledge of all kind, but through critical thinking and direct insights we learn to distinguish the true from the false, the chaff from the wheat. The higher and nobler the concepts are that we encounter and garner on our way to this new and promising land, the more holistic does our thinking become. Still, however, we are thinking conceptually, subject versus object, but the concepts have become different and broader in their connotations. Our thinking is not excluding or avoiding everything that is opposed to common or academic views, but by extending our thinking we integrate all the other different views into the infinite space of an all-encompassing holistic thinking, until we, all of a sudden, realize by a flash of enlightenment, that we have achieved a mode of thinking that embraces everything and rules out or dismisses nothing. This is true holistic thinking. A skeptical thinker may object to this holistic thinking with the following argument: if concepts get broader they become also broader in meaning. This vagueness does not sustain the process of understanding or explanation, but actually is an anachronistic return to pre-positivistic thinking, that is, to metaphysical concepts . The emptiness of these concepts has been elucidated by Kant and articulated by positivism as its central tenet. The Cartesian demand for clear and distinct concepts is still valid and true. The clearer a concept is, the easier t is to understand.

This view may have some point regarding the usefulness of the notion of distinctness. Distinct concepts are communicable on a much broader level than speculative philosophical concepts. The reason for that is not the decreasing degree of distinctness when dealing with metaphysical concepts, but the increasing degree of complexity. Whereas commonly clear concepts are simple concepts, having direct empirical reference or are mathematically defined within the science community (universality), metaphysical concepts are not directly linked to empirical or scientific sources and are therefore not as easily available to understanding as the former simple concepts. Philosophers think holistically and on a meta-level of rational thinking. That's why they are dealing with a greater complexity. Complexity means here the whole instead of only parts. Holistic thinking is complexity thinking (not complicated or confused thinking). These complex concepts can be as accurate as the simpler concepts of common-sense or science. Even in modern physics, the boundaries between rational and speculative (holistic) thinking begin to blur. The growing complexity of concepts in quantum physics breaks the narrow confines of rational thought. The engagement in the study of simple physical objects only requires simple concepts, but the study of consciousness and mind exacts from scientists to create and apply concepts that correspond to the complexity of its subject of study. The danger of this ambitious enterprise is, however, the emergence of an elitist community of thinkers, that alone will be capable of understanding these complex concepts, because they have developed a holistic thinking unknown to most people. Here we need a reconstitution of education and our cultural foundations. Children must be guided to learn holistic thinking, so that the common way of thinking is gradually transformed and elevated to a higher level of complexity and holism.

The second step was the transcendence of conceptual thinking, but there still remains a pesky residue of subject-object dualism. The third main step, then, is the identification of subject and object in Paranoesis. How can we learn to think transrationally (paranoetically)? This is not easy to explain, because for that purpose I have to use concepts, something that does not exist any more in Paranoesis. The only way to express myself seems to be by analogy, allusion, that is, by figurative and metaphorical-symbolical language. These have always been the instruments of language which enabled the great thinkers and poets to transcend the intrinsic limitation of language. I will elaborate the details of the third step and its methodology in further essays.

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21. a breath of fresh air.

Sam was so proud of himself. He had gone two years without smoking a cigarette. At the age of 14, Sam was already puffing away on his favorite brand of cigarettes, Marlboro. Even though people have to be over the age of 18 in America to buy cigarettes, Sam knew of a few stores that sold cigarettes without checking identification. Sam had spent seven years smoking, he was 21 when he decided to quit.

As a way to encourage himself to stop smoking, Sam decided to save his money every week. After two years, Sam took out all his money he had saved from not smoking, and saw that he had saved $504. He decided to buy a bicycle so he could ride it for fun and for exercise. As he started riding his bike more frequently, he noticed that he didn't think about smoking anymore. He didn't want a cigarette when he would hang out with his friends that smoked.

Sam would ride his bike in the morning because he loved getting a breath of fresh air. In the past when he smoked, the only time he got a breath of fresh air was when he went out for a cigarette. He enjoyed being outside breathing in the air that would hit his face as he rode his bike through the town.

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