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In social psychology, recategorization is a change to the identity or identities with which an individual or group identifies. When deliberately encouraged, recategorization is most often used to broaden the scope of an identity or make a more inclusive identity salient, in order to reduce bias.

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History

OG? Gaertner, Mann, Murrell, Dovidio

1998 Pettigrew suggests reformulation into a four stage process,

Mechanism

Self-Categorization Theory

Recategorization changes the salience of group identities. Self-categorization theory says that individuals usually have one category salient at a time, and making one identity salient changes their behavior.

Ingroup bias is a thing. Increase the size of the ingroup to reduce bias against the outgroups, who are now part of the ingroup.

superordinate

Intergroup Contact Theory

(Pettigrew) Describes a three-stage pathway to recategorization. First, groups with low negative stereotyping and bias come into contact, and decategorization (reduction in group salience) occurs for both groups. This stage is inhibited by strongly negative contact and significant difference in status, each of which which can reinforce group identities and contribute to intergroup hostility. Second,

Dual-Identity Recategorization

While recategorization necessarily involves a change in salient identities, dual-identity recategorization activates both the original identity and a new identity simultaneously.

This is distinguished from recategorization that results in a single salient identity and a suppressed or replaced original identity, which is referred to as single-identity recategorization (WE).

Recategorization can take Single-identity recategorization

Dual-identity recategorization (or multi-identity recategorization) retains the original identity

Dual identity recategorization functions through cross-categorization or hierarchical(?) categorization. Cross-categorization makes use of identities orthogonal to the identities unrelated to the original categorization, e.g., Black and White students on a college campus recategorizing into Students who go to X College.

hierarchical(?) categorization works by maintaining the groups in the current categorization as subgroups belonging to a superordinate group. An example of this could be fans of different baseball teams uniting as baseball fans, or fans of different sports uniting as sports fans, or members of different political parties uniting as patriots.

Practical Considerations (problems? challenges?)

Single-identity recategorization requires that an inactivated or new identity replaces an original identity. Identities are acquired over the course of life, and attempts to replace ingrained identities (e.g., race) with ephemeral identities (e.g., employer) can fail, or succeed only temporarily (WE). Lasting single-identity recategorization must overpower categorizations already present, which often have been ingrained over years by systems and social forces that continue to make salient the original categorization and threaten to reverse recategorization efforts.

Even when successful, Identity activations are often temporary.

Single-identity recategorizations can face great difficulty

Recategorization is not a cure-all. It can be difficult to recategorize people, especially single single-identity recategorizations must try to overpower categorizations already present, which often have been ingrained over years by systems that continue to make the original categorization salient.

Multiple-identity recategorization also has the potential to heighten tensions by making the source of intergroup tensions more salient.

Attaches to ingroup projection model(?) wherein subgroups project their values onto the superordinate group and judge members of that group (both within and beyond their subgroup) by those projected values. This is a means of making your ingroup's values prototypical for and normative of the superordinate group, which has benefits (cite "it's good when your group is prototypical").

(Petti)grew describes recategorization as the final state of a three-stage process which is often uncompleted.

Furthermore, reduced ingroup identity has its own effects, including X, Y, and Z. (At least note the reduction in support for collective action, depending on recategorization)

Criticism

Rwandan Recategorization Policy

starting in 1994 Rwanda started passing policies to encourage single-identity recategorization.

Consistent with ingroup projection model(?)

See Also (or incorporate somehow)

Cross Categorization

Multiple Categorization

Social Projection

Ingroup projection model

References